m^^^ ^ CONGRESS 

■■■■III 
ODomaaioi3 













/ 



AIDS TO FAITH; 



SEEIES OF THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. 



BY SEVEKAl WRITERS. 



'$qli to "(^mp una lUijtos/* 



EDITED BY 

WILLIAM THOMSOlSr, D.D., 

LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL, 



NEW YORK : 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



443 & 445 BEOADWAT. 
M.DCOO.LXII. 



^-^SO 






'<3"f\ ».-•;-■ -T 






/ 



PEEFAOE 



The Essays in tHs volume are intended to 
offer aid to those wliose faitL. may Lave been 
shaken by recent assaults. Tlie writers do not 
pretend to have exhausted subjects so vast and 
so important, within the compass of a few pages ; 
but they desire to set forth their reasons for be- 
lieving the Bible, out of which they teach, to be 
the inspired Word of God, and for exhorting 
others still to cherish it as the only message of 
salvation from God to man. They hope that 
these Essays may be, to those whose attention 
they can secure, incentives to further thought and 
reading. They have avoided, rather than sought, 
direct controversy. They have excluded person- 
ality ; they have not spoken with undue harsh- 
ness of the views they have been forced to op- 
pose. 

For the choice of contributors and the ar- 
rangement of subjects the Editor is responsible. 
Most of the writers gave their names without 
knowing those of their coadjutors ; and not one 
of them, but the Editor, has seen all the Essays 



PEEFACE. 



up to the day of publication. Each has written 
indej)endently, without any editorial interference, 
beyond a few hints to prevent omissions and rep- 
etitions, such as must arise when several writers 
work without concert. 

On the withdrawal of one of the contributors, 
Dr. McCaul most kindly undertook a second pa- 
per, at a short notice. 'No one has a better claim 
to be heard on the important subjects that have 
been confided to him. 

Professor Mansel lent much valuable aid to 
the Editor in an unexpected increase of labour. 

This volume is humbly offered to the Great 
Head of the Church, as one attempt among many 
to keep men true to Him in a time of much doubt 
and trial. Under His protection. His people 
need not be afraid. The old difficulties and ob- 
jections are revived ; but they will meet in one 
way or another the old defeat. While the world 
lasts, sceptical books will be written and an- 
swered, and the books, perhaps, and the answers 
alike forgotten. But the Eock of Ages shall 
stand unchangeable ; and men, worn with a sense 
of sin, shall still find rest " under the shadow of 
a great rock in a weary land." 

W. G. & B. 



OOH"TEIsrTS 



PAGE 

L— ON MIRACLES AS EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, . . 9 

H. L. Mansel, B. D., Waynflete Professor of Moral and 
Metaphysical Philosophy, Oxford ; Tutor and 
late Fellow of St. John's College. 

II.— ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIAN- 
ITY, 55 

William Fitzgerald, D. D., Lord Bishop of Cork, 
Cloyne and Ross. 

III.-PROPHECY, 97 

A. McCaul, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Tes- 
tament Exegesis, King's College, London, and 
Prebendary of St. Paul's. 

IV.— IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION, 157 

F. C. Cook, M. A., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, 
one of H. M.'s Inspectors of Schools, Prebendary 
of St. Paul's, and Examining Chaplain to the 
Bishop of Lincoln. 

v.— THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION, 219 

A. McCaul, D. D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Tes- 
tament Exegesis, King's College, London, and 
Prebendary of St. Paul's. 

/ 



Q CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

YI.— ON THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE 

PENTATEUCH, 273 

George Rawlinson, M, A., Camden Professor of An- 
cient History, Oxford, and late Fellow and Tutor 
of Exeter College. 



YII.— INSPIRATION, 331 

Edward Harold Browne, B. D., Norrisian Professor of 
Divinity, Cambridge, and Canon Residentiary of 
Exeter Cathedral. 

YIII.-THE death of CHRIST, 375 

William Thomson, D. D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester 

and Bristol. 

IX.— SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION, . . . .425 

Charles John Ellicott, B. D., Dean of Exeter, an 
Professor of Divinity, King's College, London. 



ESSAY I. 

ON MIEAOLES AS EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 



CONTENTS OF ESSAY I. 



1. Inteodfctioit— A Belief in the reality 
of miracles is indispensable to Chris- 
tianity. 

2. Miracles belong to the moral as well as 
to the sensible evidences of Chris- 
tianity, and are part of its essential 
doctrines, not merely of its external 
accessories. 

8. Fallacy of the argument from the dis- 
beli ef in reported miracles of the pres- 
ent day; this argument not applica- 
ble to the miracles of Christ. 

4. Testimony how far able to prove a 
miracle as such: the proof of one 
miracle removes the antecedent pre- 
sumption against others of the same 
series. 

5. Connection betweenthe miraclesof the 
Old Testament and those of the New. 

6. Amount of testimony in support of the 
Christian miracles. 

7. Fitness of the miracles as accompani- 
ments of man's redemption. 

8. Statement of the question as related to 
modern science. 

9. Position of miracles with reference to 
the empirical laws of matter. 

10. Supposed objection against miracles 
from the uniformity of nature — 
Hume's argument not strengthened 
by the subsequent progress of science. 

11. Advance of physical science tends to 
increase our conviction of the super- 
natural character of the Christian 
miracles. 

12. Difference, as regards science, be- 
tween physical phenomena and works 
done by human agency. 

13. Final alternative necessitated by sci- 
entific progress. 

14. Eefutation of Hume's argument: a 
miracle is not properly a violation of 
the laws of nature, but the introduc- 
tion of a special cause. 

15. Introduction of special causes is not 
incredible— Objection from the sup- 
posed necessary relations of natural 
forces to each other. 

16. Exception to this necessity in the 
case of the human will — Extension 
of the argument from the human will 
to the Divine. 



26. 



27. 



29. 



True conception of a miracle as the 
interposition of a superhuman will — 
Relation of this superhuman will to 
the conception of nature^ active and 
passive, and to that of law. 
Position of miracles with reference to 
our conceptions of God's nature and 
attributes — Limits within which this 
question must be discussed— Form 
which it assumes in relation to mira- 
cles. 

Man's conception of God is derived 
from mind, not from matter. 
Conceptions of law, and order, and 
causation, are borrowed by material 
from mental science. 
God is necessarily conceived as a 
Person, and as related to the per- 
sonal soul of man. 

Nature conceals God : man reveals 
God. 

Consequences of the above principles : 
miracles must be judged, not merely 
from physical, but also from moral 
and religious grounds, and their prob- 
ability estimated by that of a revela- 
tion being given at all. 
The possibility of miracles follows 
from the beUef in a personal God. 
Evidential value of miracles. — Erro- 
neous views on this point— Miracles 
how far objects, how far evidences 
of faith. 

Miracles and doctrines, their relation 
to each other — Negative character of 
the doctrinal criterion: its relation 
to the question whether miracles 
have been wrought at all. 
Agency of evil spirits is practically 
excluded from the question : practical 
question is between a Divine and a 
human origin of Christianity, as re- 
gards the authority due to each. 
Theoretical authority of miracles as 
evidences of doctrines. 
Practical extension of this authority 
— Doctrines of natural religion may 
practically be proved by miracles, 
and have actually been so. 
Principle on which the evidential 
value of miracles depends. 
Conclusion. 



OIT MIEAOLES 

AS EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



1. "What is the exact position of Miracles among 
the Evidences of Christianity, is a question which may 
he differently answered by different believers, without 
prejudice to their common belief. It has pleased the 
Divine Author of the Christian religion to fortify His 
revelation with evidences of various kinds, appealing 
with different degrees of force to different minds, and 
even to the same mind at different times. The grounds 
of belief consisting, not in a single demonstration, but 
in an accumulation of many probabilities, there is room, 
in the evidences as in the doctrines of Christianity, for 
special adaptations of different portions to different 
minds ; nor can such adaptation be regarded as matter 
of regret or censure, so long as the personal preference 
of certain portions does not involve the rejection of the 
remainder. 

The question, however, assumes a very different 
character when it relates, not to the comparative im- 
portance of miracles as evidences, but to their reality 
as facts, and as facts of a supernatural kind. For if 
this is denied, the denial does not merely remove one 
of the supports of a faith which may yet rest securely 
on other grounds. On the contrary, the whole system 
of Christian belief with its evidences, the moral no less 
than the intellectual influences, the precept and exam- 
ple for the future no less than the history of the past — 
all Christianity, in short, so far as it has any title to 
that name, so far as it has any special relation to the 
person or the teaching of Christ, is overthrown at the 
same time. 

2. For this question must be considered, not mere- 

1* 



20 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

]y, as is too often done, in relation to a purely liypo- 
thetical case, to a supposition of possible means by 
wbicli tbe Christian religion might, had it so pleased 
God, have been introduced into the world otherwise 
than it was ; but in relation to the actual means by 
which it was introduced, to the teaching and practice 
of Christ and His Apostles, as they are portrayed in 
the only records from which we can learn anything 
about them. "Whether the doctrinal truths of Christi- 
anity could or could not have been propagated among 
men by moral evidence alone, without any miraculous 
accompaniments, it is at least certain that such was not 
the manner in which they actually were propagated, 
according to the narrative of Scripture. If our Lord 
not only did works apparently surpassing human power, 
but likewise expressly declared that He did those works 
by the power of God, and in witness that the Father 
had sent him ; — if the Apostles not only wrought works 
of a similar kind to those of their Master, but also ex- 
pressly declared that they did so in His name, the mira- 
cles, as thus interpreted by those who wrought them, 
become part of the moral as well as the sensible evi- 
dences of the religion which they taught, and cannot 
be denied without destroying both kinds of evidence 
alike. " That ye may know that the Son of Man hath 
powder upon earth to forgive sins, I say unto thee, 
Arise, and take up thy couch, and go imto thine 
house : " " If I with the finger of God cast out devils, 
no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you : " 
" By the name of Jesus Christ of i^azareth, whom ye 
crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by 
Him doth this man stand here before you whole : " — 
let us imagine for an instant such words as these to 
have been uttered by one who was merely employing a 
superior knowledge of natural laws to produce a false 
appearance of supernatural power ; by an astronomer, 
for instance, who had predicted an eclipse to a crowd 
of savages, or by a chemist, availing himself of his sci- 
ence to exhibit relative miracles to an ignorant people 
—and we shall feel at once how even the most plausi- 



Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. jj 

ble of the natural explanations of miraculous phenom- 
ena deals the deathblow to the moral character of the 
teacher, no less than to the sensible evidence of his 
mission. 

But there is a yet higher witness to this intimate 
association of the Christian Evidences one w^ith another, 
in that great fact which forms at once the central point 
of apostolical preaching and the earnest of the future 
hope of all Christian men. If there is one fact recorded 
in Scripture which is entitled, in the fullest sense of tlie 
word, to the name of a Miracle, the Eesueeection of 
Christ is that fact. Here, at least, is an instance in 
which the entire Christian faith must stand or fall 
with our belief in the supernatural. " If Christ be 
not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is 
also vain." Here, at least, is a test by which all the 
evidences of Christianity alike, internal as well as ex- 
ternal, moral as well as intellectual, may be tried. If 
Christ did not truly die and truly rise from the dead, 
preaching is vain and faith is vain ; the Apostles are 
false witnesses of God ; nay, Christ Himself, if we may 
dare to say so, has witnessed falsely of Himself. 

It is necessary to state the case in this manner, in 
order to point out the real importance of the interests 
at stake. Nothing can be more erroneous than the 
view sometimes taken, which represents the question 
of the possibility of miracles as one which merely af- 
fects the external accessories of Christianity, leaving 
the essential doctrines untouched.* Such might pos- 
sibly be the case, were the argument merely confined 
to an inquiry into the evidence in behalf of some one 
miracle as an isolated fact, without impeaching the pos- 
sibility of miracles in general. But such is not the 
question which has been raised, or can be raised, as re- 
gards the relation of miracles to the alleged discoveries 

* See ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 94 (third edition). A similar view is taken 
by Schleiermacher, * Der Christliche Glaiibe,' § 14, pp. 100, sqq. With far 
greater truth it is maintained on the other hand by Rothe (' Studien und Kri- 
tiken,' 1858, p. 23) that "Miracles and Prophecies are not adjuncts appended 
from without to a revelation in itself independent of them, but constitutive 
elements of the revelation itself." 



12 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

of modern science. If the possibility of miracles be 
granted, the question, whether any particular miracle 
did or did not take place, is a question not of science, 
but of testimony. The scientific question relates to the 
possibility of supernatural occurrences at all / and if 
this be once decided in the negative, Christianity as 
a religion must necessarily be denied along with it. 
Some moral precepts may indeed remain, which may or 
may not have been first enunciated by Christ, but which 
in themselves have no essential connection with one 
person more than with another ; but all belief in Christ 
as the great Example, as the Teacher sent from God, 
as the crucified and risen Saviour, is gone, never to re- 
turn. The perfect sinlessness of His life and conduct 
can no longer be held before us as our type and pat- 
tern, if the works which He professed to perform by 
Divine power were either not performed at all or were 
performed by human science and skill. ISTo mystery 
impenetrable by human reason, no doctrine incapable 
of natural proof, can be believed on His authority ; for 
if He professed to work miracles, and wrought them 
not, what warrant have we for the trustworthiness of 
other parts of His teaching ? The benefits obtained by 
His Cross and Passion, the promises conveyed by His 
Resurrection, are no longer the objects of Christian 
faith and hope ; for if miracles are impossible. He died 
as other men die, and was laid unto His fathers, and 
saw corruption. The prayers whch we ©O'er to Him 
who ascended into Heaven, and there liveth to make 
intercession for us, are a delusion and a mockery, if 
miracles are impossible ; for then is Christ not ascended 
into Heaven. 

3. In point of fact, even single miracles cannot be 
treated as isolated occurrences, and judged as we should 
judge of any similar act narrated at another time. There 
is a latent fallacy in the appeal which is sometimes made 
to the manner in which well-informed men deal with al- 
leged marvels at the present day.* The Christian mir- 

* See * Essays and Reviews,' p. 107. A similar appeal to the practical 
denial of miracles is made by Kant, ' Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der 



Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. I3 

acles can only be judged in connection with the scheme 
of which they form a part, and by the light of all the 
collateral evidence which that scheme is able to fur- 
nish. The true question is, not what should we think 
of, or how should we endeavour to explain, a single mar- 
vellous occurrence, or even a series of such occur- 
rences, reported as taking place at the present time ? 
but, what should we think of one who should come 
now, as Christ came, supported by all the evidences 
which combined to bear witness to Him ? If the world, 
with all its advance in physical science, were morally 
and religiously in the same state as at the time of 
Christ's coming ; if we, like the Jews of old, had been 
taught by a long series of prophecies to expect a Re- 
deemer in whom all the families of the earth should be 
blessed ; if the events of our national history tended to 
show that the time was come to which those prophecies 
pointed as the epoch of their fulfilment ; if we were in 
possession of a religion, itself claiming a Divine origin, 
yet in all its institutions bearing witness to something 
yet to come — a religion of type, and ceremony, and 
sacrifice, pointing to a further purpose and a spiritual 
significance beyond themselves ; if one were to appear, 
proclaiming himself to be the promised Redeemer, 
appealing to our sacred writings as testifying of him- 
self, doing works not only full of power but of good- 
ness, full of wonder, but also full of love, and con- 
firmed by Scriptures expressly declaring that such 
works should be done by him that was to come ; doing 
them, not in secret, nor in an appointed place, nor with 
instruments prepared for the purpose, but openly and 
without eftbrt, and upon occasions as they naturally 
presented themselves, in the street and in the market- 
place, in the wilderness and on the sea, by the sick 
man's bed and the dead man's bier ; and expressly de- 
claring that he did them by the power of God and in 
proof that God had sent him ; — with all these circum- 
stances combined, let any unprejudiced man among 

blossen Vernunft,' p. 100, ed. Rosenkranz : though Kant does not go so far 
as to deny the theoretical possibiUty of miracles." 



14 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

ourselves say which would be the more reasonable 
view to be taken of such works performed by such a 
person ; whether to admit his own account of them, 
guaranteed by all the weight of his character, or to re- 
fer them to some natural cause, which will at some fu- 
ture time receive its explanation by the advance of dis- 
covery. Surely those who, even in this enlightened 
age, chose to adopt the latter hypothesis, rather than 
admit the teacher's own testimony concerning himself, 
would be the legitimate successors of those who, under 
lil^e circumstances, declared, " He casteth out devils 
through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils." " 

4. But it is said that testimony is unable to prove a 
miracle as such. " Iso testimony, we are told on high 
scientific authority, can reach to the supernatural ; tes- 
timony can apply only to apparent sensible facts ; tes- 
timony can only prove an extraordinary and perhaps 
inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon : that it is due 
to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the 
previous belief and assumptions of the parties." f What- 
ever may be the value of this objection as applied to a 
hypothetical case, in which the objector may select 
such occurrences and such testimonies as suit his pur- 
pose, it is singularly inapplicable to the works actually 
recorded as having been done by Christ and His Apos- 
tles, and to the testimony by which they are actually 
supported. It may, with certain exceptions, be appli- 
cable to a case in which the assertion of a supernatural 
cause rests solely on the testimony of the spectator of 
the fact ; but it is not applicable to those in which the 
cause is declared by the performer. Let us accept, if 
we please, merely as a narrative of " apparent sensible 
facts," the history of the cure of the blind and dumb 
demoniac, or of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate ; 
but we cannot place the same restriction upon the 
words of our Lord and of St. Peter, which expressly 

* For this argument I am partly indebted to Dean Ljall, ' Preparation of 
Prophecy,' p. 151, ed. 1854. 

t 'Essa3's and Reviews,' p. 107. This objection is partly borrowed from 
Dean Lyall, p. 23, ^vho however uses it for a very ditferent purpose. 



Essay I.] ON MIKACLES. I5 

assign the supernatural cause : " If I cast out devils by 
the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come 
unto you : " " By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth 
doth this man stand here before you whole." ^ We 
have here, at least, a testimony reaching to the super- 
natural ; and if that testimony be admitted in these 
cases, it may be extended to the whole series of won- 
derful works performed by the same persons. For if a 
given cause can be assigned as the true explanation of 
any single occurrence of the series, it becomes at once 
the most reasonable and probable explanation of the 
remainder. The antecedent presumption against a nar- 
rative of miraculous occurrences, whatever may be its 
weight, is only applicable to the narrative taken as a 
whole, and to the entire series of miracles which it con- 
tains. But if a single true miracle be admitted as es- 
tablished by sufficient evidence, the entire history to 
which it belongs is at once removed from the ordinary 
calculations of more or less probability. One miracle 
is enough to show that the series of events with which 
it is connected is one which the Almighty has seen fit 
to mark by exceptions to the ordinary course of His 
Providence ; and, if this be once granted, we have no 
d 2^'^^orl grounds on which we can determine how 
many of such exceptions are to be expected. If a sin- 
gle miracle recorded in the Gospels be once admitted, 
the remainder cease to have any special antecedent im- 
probability, and may be established by the same evi- 
dence which is sufficient for ordinary events. For the 
improbability, whatever it may be, reaches no further 
than to show that it is unlikely that God should work 
miracles at all ; not that it is unlikely that He should 
work more than a certain number. 

5. Hitherto we have spoken only of the miracles of 
Christ and His Apostles. But the miracles of the Old 
Testament also can only be rightly estimated through 
their connection with those of the New. The promise 
of man's redemption was coeval with his fall ; and the 

* St. Matt. xii. 28 ; Acts iv. 10. 



IQ AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

whole intervening history, as it is told in Scripture, is a 
narrative of the steps by which the world was pre- 
pared for the fulfilment of that promise. The miracles 
of the Old Testament, as has been observed, are chiefly 
grouped round two great epo(3hs in the history of the 
theocratic kingdom — that of its foundation under Moses 
and Joshua, and that of its restoration by Elijah and 
Elisha.* 1'hey thus have a direct relation to the es- 
tablishment and preservation of the Mosaic covenant, 
itself a supernatural system, provided with supernat- 
ural institutions, and preparing the way for the final 
consummation of God's supernatural providence in the 
advent of His Son.f "Not merely the occasional mira- 
cles of Jewish history, but some of the established and 
prominent features of their religion do^vn to the time 
of the Captivity — the gift of Prophecy, the Shechinah, 
the Urim and Thummim, the Sabbatical year, and 
others — manifest themselves as the supernatural parts 
of a supernatural system, and that system one having 
a definite purpose and pointing to a definite end 4 
They were the adjuncts of the Law ; and " the Law 
was our shoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." 

6. The real question at issue between the believer 
and the unbeliever in the Scripture miracles is not 
whether they are established by sufficient testimony, 
but whether they can be established by any testimony 
at all. If it be once granted that testimony is admissi- 
ble in the case, it is scarcely possible to conceive a 
stronger testimony than that which the Christian mira- 
cles can claim. It is the testimony, if ever such testi- 
mony was, not of man merely, but of God. Even as 
regards one who does not believe in the distinctive 
doctrines of Christianity, there are two witnesses to 
Christ which no other man, whatever may be his 
worth, can claim — the history of the Jewish nation 
before His coming, and the history both of the Jewish 

^ See Trench, 'Xotes on the Miracles,' p. 45 (sixth edition). 

t Compare Xeandcr, 'Life of Christ,' p. 138, English translation; Twes- 
ten, ' Vorlesungen ueber die Dogmatik,' ii., p. 176; Van Mildert, 'Boyle 
Lectures,' Sermon xxi. 

X Compare Cp, Atterbury, 'Sermons' (1730), vol. i., p. 153. 



Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. ji^ 

and of the Christian world afterwards. Whether it 
was by natural or by supernatural means, it cannot be 
denied that He to whom the natural and the supernat- 
ural are alike subject has permitted the course of 
events in the world to bear a witness to Christ, such as 
has never been borne to any other person who has ap- 
peared upon earth in the likeness of a man. It cannot 
be denied that the prophetic writings contain descrip- 
tions which, account for the correspondence as we may, 
do, as a fact, agree with the person and history of 
Jesus of J^azareth, as they agree with no other man, or 
body of men ; that the rites and ceremonies of the 
Jewish religion have a meaning as typical of Him, 
which no other interpretation can give to them ; that 
the temple and its services were brought to an end 
after His appearance on earth, as if expressly to exclude 
the claims of any future Messiah ; that His dominion 
has been spread over the civilized world to such an ex- 
tent, and by such means, as no other ruler, temporal or 
spiritual, can claim ; that superstitions have given way 
before His name which no other adversary had been 
able to shake ; that doctrines have been established by 
His teaching which in the hands of other teachers were 
but plausible and transitory conjectures. However 
these things may be accounted for, they are sufficient 
at least to mark Him as the central figure of the 
world's history, looked forward to by all preceding 
generations, looked backward to by all following ; they 
are sufficient to secure for His sayings and His acts an 
authority which cannot be claimed by those of any 
other person. 

7. It is scarcely necessary to state how much this 
argument is strengthened when it is addressed to one 
who believes, no matter on wdiat grounds, in any of the 
fundamental articles of the Christian Faith. 1 do not 
speak of one who believes in the narrative of the Gos- 
pels ; for to such an one the miracles are not matters 
of question ; but of one who in any sense believes in 
Christ as the Redeemer of mankind, though doubting 
some of the records of His earthly life. If God has 



18 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

seen fit to redeem the world by Christ and by Christ 
alone, what marvel if the history of Christ and of the 
dispensation preparatory to Christ exhibits signs and 
wonders such as no other history can claim ? The an- 
tecedent probability, in this case, is for the miracles, 
not against them. It is to be expected that an event 
nniqne in the world's history should be marked by ac- 
companiments partaking of its own character. The 
miracles are not every-day events, because the redemp- 
tion of mankind is not an every-day event ; they be- 
long to no cycle in the recurring phenomena of nature, 
because Christ has not often suifered since the founda- 
tion of the world. Eound this great fact of man's re- 
demption the accessory features of that wondrous nar- 
rative are grouped and clustered as around their proper 
centre ; no longer the uncouth prodigies of the king- 
dom of ]^ature, but the fitting splendours of the king- 
dom of Grace. It was meet that He who came as the 
conqueror of sin and death, who had power to lay down 
His life, and power to take it again, should come also 
as the Lord of Body and the Lord of Spirit, having 
power over the elements of matter and over the 
thoughts of men's minds ; foretold by predictions 
which no human wisdom could have suggested, tes- 
tified to by works which no human power could have 
accomplished. Yiewed as part of the scheme of Ee- 
demption, the marvels of the Scripture narrative are no 
longer isolated and unmeaning anomalies, but a fore- 
ordained and orderly system of powers, working above 
the ordinary course of nature, because their end is 
above the ordinary course of nature. The incongruity, 
the anomaly, would be if thej were not there — if the 
salvation of the souls of men was to be brought about 
by no higher means than those which minister to their 
bodily appetites and material comforts. The daily 
wants of the individual, or the progressive culture of 
the race, may be provided for or advanced by laws 
which work unceasingly from day to day, and from 
generation to generation ; but we seek no recurring 
law of the Scripture miracles, because we expect no re- 



Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 29 

currence of that fact to whicli all Scripture bears 
witness. 

8. Tlie above remarks, thongh only preliminary to 
the main question, are necessary in order to show what 
is the real point to be established, if the belief in the 
supernatural is to be overthrown. It is not the rarity 
of miracles — no one asserts them to be common : it is 
not their general improbability — no one asserts them 
to be generally probable : it is not that they need an 
extraordinary testimony as compared with other events 
— such a testimony we assert that they have. It is | 
neither more nor less than their impossibility — an im- \ 
possibility to be established on scientific grounds, such 
as no reasonable man would reject in any other case ; 
grounds such as those on which we believe that 
the earth goes round the sun, or that chemical ele- 
ments combine in definite proportions. In this point 
of view the argument is altogether of a general 
character, and is unafi'ected by any peculiarities of 
probability or testiinony which may distinguish one 
miraculous narrative from another. If the progress 
of physical or metaphysical science has shown be- 
yond the possibility of reasonable doubt that miracles 
are impossible — if, as seems to be the tendency of a 
recent argument, the assertion of a miracle is now 
known to be as absurd as the assertion that two and 
two make five*— it is idle to attempt a comparison be- 
tween greater or less degrees of probability or testi- 
mony. The preceding observations' will in that case 
only serve to show what it is that we have to surrender, 
and to rescue the inquiry from the particular fallacy 
which seeks to underrate its importance by represent- 
ing it as only afi'ecting the accidents and excrescences 
of Christianity. Let us, at the outset, be clearly con- 

* See 'Essays and Eeviews/ p. 141. It is astonishing that this acute 
author should not have seen the absurdity of introducing this statement in 
connection with testimony. No witness could possibly see two and two 
make five, or four, or any number, in tJie abstract ; he must see it in connec- 
tion with certain visible objects. Put the case in its only possible form : — 
let a man say that he had seen two balls and then two more, put together, 
and five balls produced from them ; and, instead of an impossibility, we have 
but the commonest of jugglers' tricks. 



20 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Es8atI. 

Tinced of the vital importance of tlie question, in order 
that we may enter on its examination prepared, if ne- 
cessary, to sacrifice our most valued convictions at the 
demand of truth, but, at the same time, so convinced 
of their value as to be jealous of sacrificing them to 
anything but truth. 

9. Ihe inquiry concerning the possibility of mira- 
cles in general (as distinguished from that Tvhich con- 
cerns the credibility of the ScrijDtm-e miracles in par- 
ticular) involves two distinct questions, which must be 
considered separately from each other. The first of 
these questions relates to the position occupied by mira- 
cles with reference to experience and to the empirical 
laws of matter ; the second relates to their position 
with reference to philosophical conceptions of God's 
nature and attributes. It is indispensable to a clear 
understanding of the subject that these two questions 
should be kept apart from each other ; though it will 
be necessary, in discussing the first, to take for granted 
some conclusions which will afterwards have to be 
established in connection with the second. Let us then 
assume, for the present, that we are justified in con- 
ceiving God as a Person, and in speaking of His na- 
ture and operations in the language which we should 
employ in describing the analogous cpalities and 
actions of men. We shall speak, as theists in general 
are accustomed to speak, of the loill^ and the j^ur])ose^ 
and the design of God ; of the contrast between His 
general and sjyecial providence ; of His government of 
the world and cmitrol over its laws ; reserving for a 
subsequent inquiry the vindication of these and similar 
expressions from a philosophical point of view. 

10. The argument which denies the possibility of 
miracles, on the ground of the uniformity of nature, 
may be considered under two heads : first, as regards 
the general conception of a system of natural laws; 
and, secondly, as regards the special experience of the 
mode in which those laws are manifested. The former 
may be fairly stated in the words of Hume, whose rea- 
sonino: has received no substantial addition from the 



Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 21 

labours of subsequent writers on the same side : " A 
miracle is a violation of the laws of nature ; and as a 
firm and unalterable experience has established these 
laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature 
of the fact, is as entire as any argument from ex- 
perience can possibly be imagined." * The argument, 
as thus stated, was just as stronger just as weak at the 
day when it was written as at the present time : it has 
received no additional strength from the progress of 
science during the interval, — indeed it is hard to see 
how the evidence of " a firm and unalterable ex- 
perience," if such existed at any time, is capable of 
being made stronger. 'No scientific man in the last 
century had any doubt that the sensible phenomena 
which came imder his own experience and that of 
his contemporaries were owing to some natural cause 
acting by so7ne natural law, whether the actual cause 
and law were known or unknown. The nature of this con- 
viction is not altered by any subsequent increase in the 
number of known as compared with unknown causes : the 
general conception of " a firm and unalterable ex- 
perience " is wide enough to contain all discoveries 
anticipated in the future, as well as those already 
made. 

11. In one respect, indeed, the advance of physical 
science tends to strengthen rather than to weaken our 
conviction of the supernatural character of the Christian 
miracles. In whatever proportion our knowledge of 
physical causation is limited, and the number of un- 
known natural agents comparatively large, in the same 
proportion is the probability that some of these un- 
known causes, acting in some unknown manner, may 
have given rise to the alleged marvels. But this prob- 
ability diminishes when each newdy-discovered agent, 
as its properties become known, is shown to be inade- 
quate to the production of the supposed effects, and as 
the residue of unknown causes, which might produce 
them, becomes smaller and smaller. We are told, indeed, 

* * Philosophical Works,' vol. iv., p. 133. 



22 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

that " the inevitable progress of research must, within a 
longer or shorter period, unravel all that seems most 
marvellous ;" * but we may be permitted to doubt the 
relevancy of this remark to the present case, until it 
has been shown that the advance of science has in 
some degree enabled men to perform the miracles 
performed by Christ. When the inevitable progress 
of research shall have enabled men of modern times 
to give sight to the blind with a touch, to still tempests 
with a word, to raise the dead to life, to die themselves, 
and to rise again, we may allow that the same causes 
might possibly have been called into operation, two 
thousand years earlier, by some great man in advance 
of his age. But until this is done, the unravelling of 
the marvellous in other phenomena only serves to leave 
these mighty works in their solitary grandeur, as 
wrought by the finger of God, unapproached and un- 
approachable by all the knowledge and all the power 
of man. 

12. We have already observed that there is one 
kind of testimony which can reach to the supernatural ; 
namely, the testimony of the person who himself per- 
forms the work ; and we may now add that the fact of 
the work being done by human agency places it, as 
regards the future progress of science, in a totally 
different class from mere physical phenomena. The 
appearance of a comet, or the fall of an aerolite, may 
be reduced by the advance of science from a supposed 
supernatural to a natural occurrence ; and this re- 
duction furnishes a reasonable presumption that other 
phenomena of a like character will in time meet with a 
like explanation. But the reverse is the case with re- 
spect to those phenomena which are narrated as 
having been produced hj personal agency. In propor- 
tion as the science of to-day surpasses that of former 
generations, so is the improbability that any man could 
have done in past times, by natural means, works 
which no skill of the present age is able to imitate 

* 'Essays and Reviews,' p. 109. 



Essay L] ON MIEACLES. 23 

The two classes of phenomena rest in fact on exactly 
. opposite foundations. In order that natural occurrences, 
taking place without human agency, may wear the 
appearance of prodigies, it is necessary that the cause 
and manner of their production should be unknown / 
and every advance of science from the unknown to the 
known tends to lessen the number of such prodigies by 
referring them to natural causes, and increases the 
probability of a similar explanation of the remainder. 
But on the other hand, in order that a man may j^er- 
form marvellous acts by natural means, it is necessary 
that the cause and manner of their production should 
be known by the performer; and in this case every 
fresh advance of science from the unknown to the 
known diminishes the probability that what is un- 
known now could have been known in a former age. 
13. The effect therefore of scientific progress, as 
regards the Scriptural miracles, is gradually to elimin- 
ate the hypothesis which refers them to unknown 
natural causes, and to reduce the question to the follow- 
ing' alternative: Either the recorded acts were not 
performed at all (in which case it is idle to talk of the 
probable "honesty or veracity" of the witnesses'") or 
they were performed, as their authors themselves de- 
clare, by virtue of a supernatural power, consciously 
exercised for that very purj^ose. The intermediate 
theory, which attempts to explain them as distorted 
statements of events reducible to known natural causes, 
has been tried already, in the scheme of Paulus, and 
has failed so utterly as to preclude all expectation of 
its revival, even in the land of its birth. There re- 
mains only the choice between a deeper faith and a 
bolder unbelief; between accepting the sacred narra- 
tive as a true account of miracles actually performed, 
and rejecting it as wholly fictitious and incredible; 
whether the fiction be attributed to the gradual accre- 
tion of mythical elements, or (for a later criticism has 
come back again to the older and more intelligible 

* See ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 106. 



24 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

theory^) to the conscious fabrication of a wilful 
impostor. 

14. The argument of Hume, which may be taken 
as the representative of all those which rest merely on 
the general conception of laws of nature, was refuted 
long ago by one who wrote as the advocate of his 
teaching in some other respects.f A miracle is oiot 
" a violation of the laws of nature/' in any sense in 
w^hich such a violation is impossible or inconceivable. 
It is simply the introduction of a new agent, possessing 
new powers, and therefore not included under the rules 
generalized from a previous experience. Its miracu- 
lous character, distinguishing it from mere new dis- 
coveries in nature, consists in the fact that the powers 
in question are supposed to be introduced for a special 
purpose, and to be withdrawn again when that purpose 
is accomphshed, and thus to be excluded from the 
field of future observation and investigation. But the 
supposition of such powers need not imply any viola- 
tion of the present laws observed by present natural 
agents. The laws of nature^ in the only sense of the 
phrase which is relevant to the present argument, are 
simply general statements concerning the powers and 
properties of certain classes of objects which have 
come under our observation. They say nothing about 
the powers and properties of other objects or classes 
of objects which have not been observed, or which 
have been observed with a different result. There are 
laws, for instance, of one class of material agents 
which do not apply to another ; and there are laws of 
matter in general which are not aj^plicable to mind ; 
and so there may be other orders of beings of which 
Ave have no knowledge, the laws of whose action may 
be different from all that we know of mind or body. 
A violation of the laws of nature, in this sense of the 

* In this way the mythical theory of Strauss, after having overthrown the 
naturalistic theory of Paulus, has itself in turn been subjected to the criti- 
cism of Bruno Bauer, who rejects the hypothesis of a traditional origin of the 
Gospels, in favour of that which ascribes them to deliberate fabrication, 

t See Brown on Cause and Effect, Note E. I have borrowed the leading 
idea of Brown's argument, though dissenting from some of his details, and 
therefore unable to adopt his exact language. 



Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 25 

expression, would take place if, in two cases in which 
the cause or antecedent fact were exactly the same, the 
effect or consequent fact were different. But no such 
irregularity is asserted by the believer in miracles. 
He does not assert that miracles are produced by the 
abnormal action of natural and known causes — on the 
contrary, he expressly maintains that they are pro- 
duced by a special interposition of Divine Power; and 
that such an interposition, constituting in itself a dif- 
ferent cause, may reasonably be expected to be follow- 
ed by a different effect. 

15.. So far then as a miracle is regarded as the 
operation of a special cause, producing a special effect, 
it offers no antagonism to that general uniformity of 
nature, according to which the same effects will always 
follow from the same causes. The opposition between 
science and miracle, if any exist, must be sought in 
another quarter ; namely, in the assumption (provided 
that such an assumption is warranted by science) that 
the introduction of a special cause is itself incredible. 
The ground of such an assumption appears to lie in 
the hypothesis that the existing forces of nature are so 
mutually related to each other that no new power can 
be introduced without either disturbing the whole 
equilibrium of the universe, or involving a series of 
miracles, coextensive with the universe, to counteract 
such disturbance. This seems to be the meaning of 
the following observation by a recent writer :; — "In an 
age of physical research like the present, all highly 
cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects have 
imbibed, more or less, the lessons of the inductive 
philosophy, and have at least in some measure learned 
to appreciate the grand foundation conception of 
universal law — to recognise the impossibility even of 
any two material atoms subsisting together without a 
determinate relation — of any action of the one or the 
other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without 
reference to a physical cause — of any modification 
whatsoever in the existing conditions of material 
agents, unless through the invariable operation of a 
2 



26 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

series of eternally impressed consequences, following 
in some necessary cliain of orderly connexion — how- 
ever imperfectly known to iis."^ 

This operation of a series of eternally impressed con- 
sequences could hardly be described more graphically 
or forcibly than in the following words of a great Ger- 
man philosopher : — " Let us imagine, for instance, this 
grain of sand lying some few feet further inland than it 
actually does. Then must the stormwind that drove it 
in from the sea-shore have been stronger than it actually 
was. Then must the preceding state of the atmosphere, 
by which this wind was occasioned and its degree of 
strength determined, have been different from what it 
actually was ; and the previous changes which gave rise 
to this particular weather ; and so on. We must sup- 
pose a different temperature from that which really ex- 
isted, and a different constitution of the bodies which 
influenced this temperature. The fertility or barrenness 
of countries, the duration of the life of man, depend, 
unquestionably, in a great degree, on temperature. How 
can you know — since it is not given us to penetrate 
the arcana of nature, and it is therefore allowable to 
speak of possibilities — how can you know that in such 
a state of the weather as we have been supposing, in 
order to carry this grain of sand a few yards further, some 
ancestor of yours might not have perished from hunger, 
or cold, or heat, long before the birth of that son from 
whom you are descended ; that thus you might never 
have been at all ; and all that you have ever done, and 
all that you ever hope to do in this world, must have 
been hindered, in order that a grain of sand might lie 
in a different place ?"f 

* 'Essays and Reviews,' p. 133. 

t Pichte, ' Die Bestimmung des Measchen/ Werke, ii., p. 178. For the 
translation I am indebted to an excellent American %york, which deserves to 
be better known in this country, and to which I take this opportunity of ex- 
pressing my own obligations — ' The Principles of Metaphysical and Ethical 
Science,' by my friend Professor Bowen, of Harvard College. 

Schleiermacher ( ' Der Christliche Glaube,' § 47, p. 260) expresses in 

feneral terms, and with express reference to miracles, the same view which 
ichte has exhibited by an instance in relation to necessity in general. " A 
miracle," he says, " has a positive relation, by which it extends to all that is 
future, and a negative relation, whieh in a certain sense affects all that is 
past. In so far as that does not follow which would have followed according 
to the natural connection of the aggregate of finite causes, in so far an effect 



Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 27 

16. Without attempting to criticise the argument 
as thus eloquently stated, let us make one alteration in 
the circumstances supposed — an alteration necessary to 
make it relevant to the present question. Let us suppose 
that the grain of sand, instead of being carried to its pres- 
ent position by the wind, has been placed there by a man. 
Is the student of physical science prepared to enumerate 
a similar chain of material antecedents, which must have 
been other than they were, before the man could have 
chosen to deposit the grain of sand on any other spot 
than that on which it is now lying? Such a conclusion 
has indeed been maintained in general terms, without 
any specification of antecedents, by the advocates of 
Fatalism ; and it is maintained in the continuation of 
the passage from which the above extract is taken.* 
Bat the question is, not whether such a conclusion has 
been asserted, as many other absurdities have been 
asserted, by the advocates of a theory ; f but whether it 
has been established on such scientific grounds as to be 
entitled to the assent of all duly cultivated minds, 
whatever their own consciousness may say to the con- 
trary. :[: The mostrigid prevalence of law and necessary 

is hindered, not by the influence of other natural counteracting causes be- 
longing to the same series, but notwithstanding the concurrence of. all effec- 
tive causes to the production of the effect. Everything, therefore, which 
from all past time contributed to this effect is in a certain measure annihilat- 
ed ; and instead of the interpolation of a single supernatural agent into the 
course of nature, the whole conception of nature is destroyed. On the posi- 
tive side, something takes place which is conceived as incapable of following 
from the aggregate of finite causes. But, inasmuch as this event itself now 
becomes an actual link in the chain of nature, every future event must be 
other than it would have been had this one miracle not taken place. Every 
miracle thus not only destroys the original order of nature forever after; but 
each later miracle destroys the earlier ones, so far as these have become parts 
of the series of effective causes." The whole argument, as Rothe has ob- 
served, rests on the assumption of absolute determinism. 

* Not however as the author's own conclusion ; but as one of two con- 
flicting doubts, to be afterwards resolved. 

t " Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosopho- 
rum." — Cicero, De Divinatione, ii., 58. 

X An attempt has recently been made to prove the non-existence of free 
will, by means of statistical calculations, showing an average uniformity in 
the recurrence of certain actions in certain periods of time. The resemblance, 
however, between statistical averages and natural laws fails at the very point- 
on which the whole weight of the argument rests. A natural law is valid for 
a class of objects, only because and in so far as it is valid for each individual 
of that class : the law of gravitation, for instance, is exhibited in a single 
apple as much as in an orchard ; and is concluded of the latter from being 



28 ^IDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

sequence among purely material phenomena may be ad- 
mitted without apprehension by the firmest believer in 
miracles, so long as that sequence is so interjDreted as 
to leave room for a power indispensable to all moral 
obligations and to all religious belief — the power of Free 
"Will in man. 

Deny the existence of a freewill in man ; and neither 
the possibility of miracles, nor any other question of 
religion or moralit}^, is worth contending about. Admit 
the existence of a free will in man ; and we have the 
experience of a power, analogous, however inferior, to 
that which is supposed to operate in the production of 
a miracle, and forming the basis of a legitimate argu- 
ment from the less to the greater. * In the Will of man 
we have the solitary instance of an Eflicient Cause in 
the highest sense of the term, acting among and along 
with the physical causes of the material world, and 
producing results which would not have been brought 
about by any invariable sequence of physical causes 
left to their own action. We have evidence, also, of 
an elasticity^ so to speak, in the constitution of nature, 
which permits the inliuence of human power on the phe- 
nomena of the world to be exercised or suspended at will, 
without aifecting the stability of the whole. We have 
thus a precedent for allowing the possibility of a sim- 
ilar interference of a higher will on a grander scale, 
provided for by a similar elasticity of the matter sub- 
jected to its influence. Such interferences, whether 
produced by human or by superhuman will, are not con- 
trary to the laws of matter ; but neither are they the re- 
sult of those laws. They are the work of an agent who 
is independent of the laws, and who, therefore, neither 
obeys them nor disobeys them.f If a man, of his own 
free will, throws a stone into the air, the motion of the 
stone, as soon as it has left his hand, is determined by a 

observed in the former. But the uniformity represented by statistical aver- 
ages is one which is observed in masses onlv, and not in individuals ; and 
hence the law, if law it be, which such averages indicate, is one which offers 
no bar to the existence of individual freedom, exercised, as all human power 
must be exercised, within certain limits. 

* Compare Twesten, ' Vorlesungen ueber die Dogmatik,' ii., p. 171. 

t See Rothe, iu ' Studien und Kritiken,' 1858, p. 33. 



Essay L] ON MIEACLES. 29 

combination of purely material laws ; partly by the 
attraction of the earth ; partly by the resistance of the 
air; partly by the magnitude and direction of the force 
by which it was thrown. But by what law came it to 
be thrown at all ? What law brought about the cir- 
cumstances though wliich the aforesaid combination of 
material laws came into operation on this particular 
occasion and in this particular manner? The law of 
gravitation, no doubt, remains constant and unbroken, 
whether the stone is lying on the ground or moving 
through the air ; but neither the law of gravitation, nor 
all the laws of matter put together, could have brought 
about this particular result, without the interposition 
of the free will of the man who throws the stone. Sub- 
stitute the will of God for the will of man ; and the 
argument, which in the above instance is limited to the 
narrow sphere within which man's power can be exer- 
cised, becomes applicable to the whole extent of creation, 
and to all the phenomena which it embraces. 

17. The fundamental conception, which is indispen- 
sable to a true apprehension of the nature of a miracle, 
is that of the distinction of Mind from Matter, and of 
the power of the former, as a personal, conscious, and free 
agent, to influence the phenomena of the latter. We are 
conscious of this power in ourselves ; we experience it in 
our everyday life ; but we experience also its restriction 
within certain narrow limits, the principal one beingthat 
man's influence upon foreign bodies is only possible 
through the instrumentality of his own body.^ Be- 
yond these limits is the region of the miraculous. In 
at least the great majority of the miracles recorded 
in Scripture, the supernatural element appears, not in 
the relation of matter to matter, but in that of matter 
to mind ; in the exercise of a personal power tran- 
scending the limits of man's will. They are not so much 
supermaterial as sujperJniman. Miracles, as evidences of 
religion, are connected with a teacher of that religion ; 
and their evidential character consists in the witness 
which they bear to him as "a man approved of God 

* Twesten, * Vorlesungen ueber die Dogmatik/ i. p. 368. 



30 ^I^S TO FAITH. [EssATl. 

bj miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by 
him." He may make use of natoral agents, acting by 
tlieir own laws, or he may not : on this question various 
conjectures may be hazarded, more or less plausible. 
The miracle consists in his making use of them, so far 
as he does so, under circumstances which no human 
skill could bring about. When a sick man is healed, 
or a tempest stilled, by a word, the mere action of 
matter upon matter may possibly be similar to that 
which takes place when the same effects occur in a 
natural way: the miracle consists in the means by which 
that action is brought about. And those means, w.e 
are assured by the word of the Teacher himself, are 
nothing less than the power of God, vouchsafed for the 
express purpose of bearing witness that God has sent 
him. Is it more reasonable, taking the whole evidence 
into account, to believe his word ; or to suppose, either 
that the works were not done at all, or that they were 
done by a scientific deception? This is the real ques- 
tion to be decided. 

If, indeed, we include, under the term nature^ all 
that is potential, as well as all that is actual, in the con- 
stitution of the world — all that can be brought about 
in it by divine power, as well as all that is brought 
about in it by physical causes, — in such an extended 
sense of the term, a miracle, like any other occurrence, 
may be included within the province of nature. We 
may, doubtless, believe that God from the beginning, 
so ordered the constitution of the world as to leave room 
for the exercise of those miraculous powers which He 
foresaw would at a certain time be exercised; just as 
He has left similar room for the exercise, within nar- 
rower limits, of the human will. In this sense, some 
of the scholastic divines maintained, with reason, that a 
miracle is contrary to nature only in so far as nature is 
regarded as an active manifestation, not in so far as it 
is regarded as a passive recipient of power.* If this 

* This is clearly expressed in the language of Alexander ab Ales, * Summa,* 
p. ii., qu. xlii., numb, v., art. 5 : — " Est enim potentia activa, et est potentia 
susceptiva, et est potentia aptata et potentia non aptata. Et est potentia ac- 
tira tarn naturae inferioris quam superioris ; susceptiva autem naturae infe- 
rioris. Et yerum est quod quicquid est Deo possibile secundum potentiam 



Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 3j 

distinction is once clearly understood, the question, 
whether miracles may be represented as the result of 
law^ or not, is a mere verbal question, which is only 
important from its liability to be mistaken for a real 
one. Properly speaking, a natural effect is not produced 
by a law, but by an agent acting according to a law. 
Every natural phenomenon has its physical cause in 
some antecedent natural phenomenon which it regularly 
follows ; and the laws of nature are merely classifica- 
tions of some of these sequences with others of a simi- 
lar character;* or, as they have been aptly called, 
" the uniformities which exist among natural phenom- 
ena, when reduced to their simplest expression." f In 
this sense, miracles cannot be referred to a natural law, 
known or unknown ; for they do not resemble any se- 
quence of one sensible phenomenon from another ; nor 
can any sensible phenomenon or group of phenomena 
be pointed out, or even supposed to exist, the occurrence 
of which would be invariably followed by such results. 
But if the term law be used in a different sense, to de- 
note a method or plan conceived in the mind of an 
intelligent Being; and if, by referring miracles to a 
law, no more is meant than that they, like other events, 
forrned part of God's purpose from the beginning, and 
were the result, not of sudden caprice, but of a pre- 
ordained plan, by which provision was made for them, 
that they should be wrought at their proper time and 
place without disturbing the economy of the universe, 
• — such an expression, allowing for the necessary imper- 
fection of all human terms when applied to divine 
things, is perhaps the most true and reverent conception 

activam, est naturse possibile, non simpliciter, sed secundum potentiam sus- 
ceptivam ; et hoc est dicta possibilitas ; sed non secundum activam potentiam, 
nee secundum aptatam." A similar view is held b;^ Albertus Magnus, 'Sum- 
ma,' p. ii., tract viii., qu. xxxi. ; and by Aquinas, in 1 Sent., dist. xlii., qu. 
ii., art. 2. See also Neander, * Church History,' vol. viii., p. 161, Eng. tr. ed. 
Bohu. 

* " No further insight into why the apple falls is acquired by saying it is 
forced to fall, or it falls by the force of gravitation : by the latter expression 
we are enabled to relate it most usefully to other phenomena ; but we still 
know no more of the particular phenomena than that under certain circum- 
stances the apple does fall." — G-rove on the Correlation of Physical Forces, p. 
18, 3rd edition. + Mill's ' Logic,' vol. i., p. 385. 



32 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I 

of these events wMcb. we are capable of forming during 
this present life ; thougli, like other analogies trans- 
ferred from the hnman mind to the Divine, it is the 
object rather of religious belief than of philosophical 
speculation. 

18. Our argument has hitherto proceeded on the 
assumption that we are justified in regarding the visi- 
ble world as under the government of a personal God, 
and in speaking of His acts and purposes in language 
which implies an analogy between the Divine mind 
and the human. It now becomes necessary to make 
some remarks in vindication of the assumption itself, 
which has been included by recent criticism in the 
same condemnation with the consequences which we 
have endeavoured to deduce from it. Of the argument 
from design, "as poi^ularly pursued," we are told that 
it " proceeds on the analogy of a personal agent, whose 
contrivances are limited by the conditions of the case 
and the nature of his materials, and pursued by steps 
corresponding to those of human plans and operations : 
— an argument leading only to the most unworthy and 
anthropomorphic conceptions.* We are told, again, that 
" to attempt to reason from law to volition, from order to 
active power, from universal reason to distinct personal- 
ity, from design to self-existence, from intelligence to in- 
finite perfection, is in reality to adopt grounds of argu- 
ment and speculation entirely beyond those of strict 
philosophical inference." f We are told, again, that 
" the simple argument from the invariable order of na- 

* Powell, * Order of Nature,' p. 237. It is natural to turn to this more 
elaborate work, published but a short time before the ' Essays and Reviews,' 
as the most probable source from which to complete or explain anything 
which seems defective or obscure in the author's contribution to the latter 
volume. At the same time it is but just to call attention to some indications 
of a very different and a far truer view, in an earlier work by the same 
writer ; as in the following passage, which I venture to cile, though unable 
to reconcile it with his latter language : — " It is by analogy with the exercise 
of intellect, and the volition, or power of moral causation, of which we are 
conscious within ourselves, that we speak of the Supreme Mind, and Moral 
Cause of the universe, of whose operation, order, arrangement, and adapta- 
tion are the external manifestations. Order implies what by analogy we call 
intelligence : subserviency to an observed end implies miQWrnQuce foreseeing, 
which, by analogy, we call design." — On the Spirit of the inductive Fhilos- 
ly, p. 166. 

+ Powell, * Order of Nature,' p. 244. 



Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 33 

ture is wholly incompetent to give us any conception 
whatever of the Divine Omnipotence, except as main- 
taining^ or acting through^ that invariable universal sys- 
tem of physical order and law;" and that "a theism of 
Omnipotence in any sense deviating from the order of 
nature must be entirely derived from other teaching." * 
In order to test the value of these and similar arguments, 
it will be necessary that we should clearly understand 
what this other teaching is, and what it teaches us ; as 
well as the relation in which it stands to the general- 
izations and inductions of physical science. 

In examining this question, we are not directly con- 
cerned with the higher inquiry regarding the degree 
and character of man's knowledge of God, as a whole 
and from whatever source derived, in its relation to 
the absolute essence of its Divine Object, and to 
the necessary limits of man's faculties. The diffi- 
culties connected with metaphysical theories of the Ab- 
solute and Inlinite, which have driven so many specu- 
lative minds into the extravagances of Pantheism, do 
not affect our present argument. How any relation 
between the infinite and the finite can be conceived as 
existing ; — how God can be contemplated as acting in 
time at all^ whether in connection with the phenomena 
of the material world, or with the thoughts and feelings 
of men: — questions of this kind are equally applicable 
to every positive conception of Divine Providence which 
we are capable of forming, and have no direct bear- 
ing on the peculiar claims of one class of such concep- 
tions as compared with another. The general answer 
to such difficulties is to be found in the confession of 
our ignorance as regards the mystery from which they 
spring and on which their solution depends ; but this 
ignorance, arising as it does from the universal limits 
of human thought, has no special relation to one age 
or state of man's knowledge, more than to another, and 
is not removed by any advance in those departments 
which fall within his legitimate field. Pantheistic 
speculation has flourished with much the same result, 

* Powell, ' Order of Nature,' p. 247. 
2* 



34 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

or want of result, in the earliest and in the latest days 
of philosophy, in ancient India and in modern Ger- 
many ; and if any advance is to be expected in relation 
to the questions Tvith which such speculation deals, it 
is probably to be looked for, not in the fuller solution 
of the questions themselves, but in the clearer appre- 
hension of the reasons why they are insoluble. 

The question now before us is of another character. 
It relates to that knowledge of God which, be it more 
or less philosophically perfect, is that which practically 
determines the thoughts and feelings and actions of the 
majority of mankind; being connected with facts of 
their daily experience, and with ideas intimately asso- 
ciated with those facts. And the form in which it 
meets us at present may be expressed as follows : — Is 
the truest and highest conception of God to which man 
can practically attain with his present faculties that 
which is suggested by the observation of Law and 
Order, as existing in the material world ? or is there a 
higher conception, derived from a different class of ob- 
jects, by which the errors of an exclusively physical 
theology may be discovered and corrected ? 

19. Eeduced to its simplest terms the question really 
stands thus : — Is Matter or Mind the truer image of 
God ? ^e are told indeed, ^'that the study of physical 
causes is the sole real clue to the conception of a moral 
cause ; and that physical order, so far from being op- 
posed to the idea of supi'eme intelligence, is the very 
exponent of it." ^ We are referred to "the grand con- 
templation of cosmical order and unit}^ " as furnishing 
"proofs of the ever-present mind and reason in nature ;"f 
but we have yet to learn what is the exact process by 
which the desired conclusion is elicited from the prem- 
ises. 

20. In opposition to these statements I do not hesi-' 
tate to repeat, with a very slight modification, the 
words of Sir William Hamilton, " that the class of 
phenomena which requires that kind of cause we de- 
nominate a Deity is exclusively given in the phenom- 

* Powell, ' Order of ^'ature,' p. 235. t Ibid., p. 238. 



Essay L] ON MIEACLES. 35 

ena of mind ; that the phenomena of matter, taken by 
themselves (you will observe the qualification — taken 
by themselves), do not warrant any inference to the 
existence of a God."* The argument which would de- 
duce the conception of God solely from physical causa- 
tion bears witness, in the very words in which it is 
announced, to its own imperfection. The very names 
of law^ and order^ and cause^ had a literal before they 
had a figurative meaning, and are borrowed, in com- 
mon with the whole phraseology of causation, by the 
sciences of invariable succession, from those of moral 
action and obligation. We discern Law as Law, solely 
by means of the personal consciousness of duty / we 
gain the conception, not by the external observation of 
what is, but by the internal apprehension of what ought 
to he. We discern Causation, as Causation, solely in 
and by the productive energy of the personal will, — 
the one solitary fact of human experience' in which is 
presented the consciousness of effort^ — oipower in action, 
exerting itself to the production of an efifect. We dis- 
cern Order, as Order, only in so far as we conceive the 
many as constituting the One, — the varied phenomena 
of sense as combined into a single whole; and the ideas 
o^ unity and totality are given only in the personal con- 
sciousness, — in the immediate perception of the one 
indivisible Self, and its several modes of conscious ex- 
istence.f What do we mean when we speak of the 
Order of Nature as implying a presiding Mind ? The 
language is unintelligible save as interpreted by what 
the personal consciousness tells us of our own mind and 
its control over the objects that are under its dominion. 
In the little world of man's thought and its objects, 
that Order, that System from which the Cosmos derives 
its name, — that Unity which binds together the diverse 
elements into a consistent whole, — is the factor contrib- 

* * Lectures on Metaphysics,' vol. i., p. 26. 

t " Le moi est la seule unite qui nous soit donnee immediatement par la 
nature ; nous ne la rencontrons dans aucune des choses que nos facultes ob- 
servent. Mais I'entendement, qui la trouve en lui, la met hors de lui par in- 
duction, et d'un certain nombre des choses coexistantes il cree des unites 
ratificielles." — Eoyer-Collard, in Jouffroy's translation of Eeid, vol. ir., 
p. 350. 



35 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

Tited by the mind to its objects, — the product of Intelli- 
gence, comprehending, arranging, generalizing, classi- 
fying. Without this action of mind upon its objects, 
the little world of each man's kno\Yledge would be, not 
a Cosmos, but a Chaos, — not a system of parts in 
mutual relation to each other, but an endless succession 
of isolated phantoms coming and going one by one. It 
is from this little world of our own consciousness, with 
its many objects, marshalled in their array under the 
rule of the one conscious Mind, that we are led to the 
thought of the great universe beyond, — that we con- 
ceive this also as a world of Order, and as being such 
by virtue of its relation to an ordering and presiding 
Mind. Design, Purpose, Eelation of parts to a whole, 
of means to an end, — these conceptions borrowed from 
the world of mind, can alone give order and unity to 
the world of matter, by representing it as moulded and 
governed by a ruling and purposing Mind, the centre 
and the source of that relation which mind does not 
take from matter, but confers upon it. Through this 
alone can Chaos be conceived as Cosmos ; through this 
alone can the Many point to the One. 

21. But this is not all. The very conception of a 
Design in creation implies the existence of a Free Will 
in the Designer. If man were not conscious of a free 
will in himself, he could frame no designs, he could con- 
ceive no purjDoses of his own ; and without the assump- 
tion of an analogous Divine Will, there is no meaning in 
his language when he speaks of the Design or Purpose of 
God. But in conceiving God as a free agent, we neces- 
sarily conceive Him as a Person ; and this conception 
places Him in a totally different light from that of a mere 
soul of the world, or intelligence manifested in a system 
of material phenomena. In conceiving God as a Person, 
we conceive Him as standing in a direct relation to that 
one object in the world which is most nearly akin to 
Himself, — the personal soul of man, by whom He is so 
conceived. The personality, and, as implied in the 
personality, the moral nature of God, is not, as it has 
sometimes been represented, an isolated conception. 



Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 3*7 

derived from a distinct class of facts, and superadded 
to another conception of a Deity derived from the order 
of nature :^ it is the primary and fundamental idea of 
a G-od in any distinctive sense of the word, — an idea 
without which no religion and no theology, no feeling 
of a spiritual relation between God and man, and no 
conception of a mind superior to nature, can have any 
existence. To speak, in the language of modern pan- 
theistic philosophy, of a Keason or Thought in the uni- 
verse, which first becomes conscious in man, is simply 
to use terms without a meaning ; for we have no con- 
ception of reason or thought at all, except as a con- 
sciousness. And to speak, on the side of physical 
philosophy, of a Supreme Mind, evinced in the laws 
of matter, is, in like manner, to use terms which have 
no meaning until we have acquired a conception of 
what mind is from the consciousness of the mind 
within ourselves. Our primary religious consciousness 
is that of man's relation to God as a j)erson to a per- 
son ; and, unless we begin with this and retain it in 
our knowledge, the very name of God is unmeaning. 
If this be Anthropomorphism, it is, as Jacobi has said, 
an Anthropomorphism identical with Theism, and with- 
out which there remains nothing but Atheism or Fe- 
tichism.f 

22. The following quotation from the same eloquent 
and profound philosopher is probably already familiar 
to many readers, but is too excellent in itself and too 
appropriate to the present argument to be omitted. 

* " At the utmost/' says Professor Powell, *' a physico-theology can only 
teach a supreme mind evinced in the laws of the world of matter, and the 
relations of a Deity to physical things essentially as derived from physical 
law. A moral or metaphysical theology (so far as it may be substantiated) 
can only lead us to a Deity related to mind, or to the moral order of the 
world." — Order of Nature, p. 245. 

I consider this separation between two sovirces of theology as fundamen- 
tally erroneous. I believe that man's conception of God as riiind is primarily 
derived from the personal consciousness alone ; and that, however much it 
may be enlarged by the contemplation of material objects, it does not origi- 
nate from them, and can only be legitimately applied to them in and by its 
primary characteristics of personality and a moral nature. 

t " Wir bekennen uns demnach zu einem von der Ueberzeugung, dass 
der Mensch Gottes Ebenbild in sich trage — unzertrennlichen Anthropomor- 
phismus, und behaupten, ausser diesem Anthropomorphismus, der von jeher 
Theismus genannt wurde, ist nur Gotteslaugnung oder — Feticliismusy — Von 
den Gottlichen Dingen, Werke, iii., p. 422. 



38 AIDS TO FAITH, [EssatL 

^^Wature conceals God ; for, througli her whole do- 
main, ISTature reveals only fate, only an indissoluble 
cliain of mere efficient causes,"^ Trithont beginning and 
without end, excluding, with equal necessity, both 
providence and chance. An independent agency, a 
free original commencement, Tvithin her sphere and 
proceeding from her powers, is absolutely impossible, 
forking without will, she takes counsel neither of the 
good nor of the beautiful ; creating nothing, she casts 
np from her dark abyss only eternal transformations of 
herself, unconsciously and without an end ; furthering, 
with the same ceaseless industry, decline and increase, 
death and life, — never producing what alone is of God 
and what supposes liberty, — the virtuous, the immortal. 

'^ Man reveals God ; for Man, by his intelligence, 
rises above JSTature, and, in virtue of this intelligence, 
is conscious of himself as a power not only independent 
of, but opposed to, jSTature, and capable of resisting, 
conquering^ and controlling her. As man has a living 
faith in this power, superior to nature, which dwells in 
him, so has he a belief in God, a feeling, an ex|3erience 
of His existence. As he does not believe in this power, 
so does he not believe in God ; he sees, he exj^eriences 
nought in existence but nature — necessity — fate."f 

23. From the above principles it follows (to use the 
words of Sir William Hamilton) " that the universe is 
governed not only by physical but by moral laws ;" 
and " that intelligence stands first in the absolute order 
of existence — in other words, that final preceded efQ.- 
cient causes.":}: But this involves, as a consequence, 
that the question concerning the possibility or proba- 
bility of a miracle is to be judged, not merely from 
physical, but also, and principally, from moral grounds ; 

* The phrase efficient causes (-wirkende Ursachen), here and in a subse- 
quent quotation from the translator, must be understood in a different sense 
from that in which it is used bv some modern writers, to denote meta- 
physical as distinguished from physical causes— a sense adopted above, p. 
2S. For the two senses of the phrase, see especially a note in Stewart's 
'Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers,' book iii., ch. ii.. Collected 
Works, vii., p. 27. 

t Werke, iii., p. 425. Translated bv Sir W. Hamilton, 'Lectures on 
Metaphysics,' vol. i., p. 40. 

+ ' Lectures on Metaphysics,' vol. i., p. 28. 



Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 39 

not merely from the evidence furnished by the phe- 
nomena of the material world, but also from that fur- 
nished by the religious nature of man, and by his rela- 
tion to a God to whom that nature bears witness. It is 
altogether an erroneous view to represent the question 
between general law and special interposition as if it 
rested on mechanical considerations only — as if it could 
be judged by the difference between constructing a 
machine which, when once made, can go on continu- 
ously by its own power, and one which, at successive 
periods, requires new adjustments.* The miracle is 
not wrought for the sake of the physical nniverse, but 
for the sake of the moral beings within it; and the 
question to be considered is not whether a divine inter- 
position is needed to regulate the machinery of nature, 
but whether it is needed or adapted to promote the re- 
ligious welfare of men. If the spiritual restoration of 
mankind has in any degree been promoted by means 
of a religion professing to have been introduced by the 
aid of miracles, and whose whole truth is involved in 
the truth of that profession, we have a sufficient reason 
for the miraculous interposition, superior to any that 
can be nrged for or against it from coilsiderations de- 
rived from the material world. The very conception 
of a revealed as distinguished from a natural religion 
implies a manifestation of God different in kind from 
that which is exhibited by the ordinary course of na- 
ture ; and the question of the probabilitj^ of a miracu- 
lous interposition is simply that of the probability of 
a revelation being given at all. In the words of Bishop 
Butler, "Revelation itself is miraculous, and miracles 
are the proof of it."f 

24. As regards the general question of the pos- 
sibility of miracles (that of their reality must of course 
be determined by its own special evidence), Paley's 
criticism is, after all, the true one : — " Once believe 
that tliere is a God, and miracles are not incredible,'^ 

* This objection against miracles is urged by Voltaire, 'Dictionnaire 
Philosophique,' v. 'Miracles,' and is answered by Bishop Van Mildert, 
* Boyle Lectures,' Sermon xxi. 

•f * Analogy,' part ii., ch. ii. 



40 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

For an impersonal God is no God at all ; and the con- 
ception of a personal God in relation to man neces- 
sarily involves that of a divine purpose, and of the 
manifestation of that purpose in time. Grant this, and 
there is no d priori reason why such a manifestation 
may not take place at one time as well as at another ; 
why the beginning of a spiritual system at one period 
may not be as credible as the beginning of a material 
system at another period. It would indeed be a pre- 
carious argument to attempt to reason positively from 
an a priori notion of the divine attributes to the neces- 
sity of creation or of revelation ; but the very con- 
ditions which render such an argument doubtful only 
increase the force of the negative caution, which, re- 
fusing to dogmatize on either side concerning what 
must he or must not he^ is content to seek for such evi- 
dence as is within its reach concerning loJiat is. 

25. With the question of the ^possibility of miracles 
is intimately connected that of their value as evidences. 
Both questions, indeed, must ultimately be decided on 
the same principle ; and the influence of that principle 
is probably at work, though unconsciously, in the minds 
of some who endeavour to regard the two inquiries as 
wholly distinct. Sometimes, indeed, we find both 
united, and apparently treated as parts of the same 
argument on the side of denial ; though it is ob- 
vious that, if the impossibility of miracles can once be 
shown, there is no need of any inquiry into their com- 
parative value. ISTevertheless, as if the conclusiveness 
of the former argument were, after all, somewhat 
doubtful in the eyes of its advocates, we find it 
coupled with an attempt to disparage the value of the 
miracles as evidences, even supposing their reality. It 
is intimated that they are not so much evidences as 
objects of faith, invested with sanctity and exempted 
from criticism by virtue of the religious mysteries with 
which they are connected : '^ and approved divines are 
referred to as practically making the doctrine the real 
test of the admissibility of the miracles, and as ac- 

* See * Essays and Reviews,' p. 143. 



Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 4j 

knowledging the riglit of an appeal, superior to that 
of all miracles, to our own moral tribunal.* The feel- 
ing which dictates this judgment is intelligible at least, 
if not excusable, as the result of a reaction against the 
opposite error of a former generation : but, when the 
judgment is advanced, as it often is, not merely as an 
expression of the personal feelings of an individual, 
but as a general statement of the right grounds of be- 
lief, it is at best nothing more than an attempt to cure 
one evil by another, introducing a remedy, on the 
whole, worse than the disease. 

Some of the questions introduced in this connection 
properly belong to an earlier stage of our argument ; 
for though they have been treated by some writers as 
bearing on the evidential value of miracles, supposing 
their reality to be admitted, they more strictly relate 
to the previous inquiry concerning the grounds on 
which we believe miracles to have been wrought at 
all. Thus the assertion that the Gospel miracles are 
objects of faith is undoubtedly true ; but it is true in a 
sense which is by no means incompatible with their 
being also evidences.\ To us, in these latter days, as 
regards the grounds on which we believe the miracles 
to have taken place at all, they are "objects of faith" 
in that proper sense of the term fcdth in which it is 
opposed, not to reason^ but to sight.X We were not 
eye-witnesses of the miracles : we know all that we 
know about them from the testimony of others ; and 
testimony of all kinds is an appeal to faith, as dis- 
tinguished from sight, — -^rcesentia mdentur^ creduntur 
absentia.% But to say that miracles are in this sense 
objects of faith, is a very different thing from making 
them exempt from criticism by virtue of the religious 
mysteries with which they are connected. The faith 
which is called into exercise is only that which is re- 

* * Essays and Reviews/ pp. 121, 122. 

t When it is asserted that the miracles are objects, not evidences, of 
faith, it is obvious that the word faith is used in two different senses. In 
relation to objects, it means an act of belief; in relation to evidences, it means 
a doctrine to be believed. 

X 2 Cor. V. 7, " We walk by faith, not by sight." 

§ St. Augustine, Epist. cxivii., c. 2. 



42 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

quired in all admission of testimony, whether connect- 
ed with religions mysteries or not ; which exists in all 
cases in which we accept, on the authority of others, 
statements which we are unable to verify by our own 
experience. 

26. The often-disputed question, whether the mira- 
cles prove the doctrine, or the doctrine the miracles, is 
also one which properly belongs to the earlier inquiry 
concerning the credibility of the miracles as facts, and 
which, like that of objects and evidences^ derives a 
seeming plausibility from an epigrammatic antithesis 
of language covering a confusion of thonght. There 
are certain doctrines which must be taken into account 
in determining the question whether a true miracle — 
i.e. an interposition of Divine ])ower — has taken place 
at all. If a teacher claiming to work miracles pro- 
claims doctrines contradictory to previously establish- 
ed truths, whether to the conclusions of natural re- 
ligion or to the teaching of a former revelation, such a 
contradiction is allowed, even by the most zealous de- 
fenders of the evidential value of miracles, to invali- 
date the authority of the teacher.^ But the right con- 
clusion from this admission is not that true miracles 
are invalid as evidences, but that the supposed miracles 
in this case are not true miracles at all ; i.e. are not the 
effects of Divine power, but of human deception or of 
some other agency. And the criterion, as has been 
often observed, is only of a negative character ; con- 
tradiction to known truth is sufficient to disprove a 
Divine mission ; but conformity to known truth is not 

* Thus Clarke ('Evidence of Natural and Eevealed Religion,' Prop, xiv.) 
says, "If the doctrine attested by miracles be in itself impious, or manifestly- 
tending to promote vice, then without all question the miracles, how great 
soever they may appear to us, are neither worked by God Himself nor by 
His commission, because our natural knowledge of the attributes of God, 
and of the necessary difference between good and evil, is greatly of more 
force to prove any such doctrine to be false than any miracles in the world 
can be to prove it true." But Clarke also shows that this admission is a very 
different thing from making the doctrine the proof of the miracles ; that, on 
the contrary, the miracles are the proof of the doctrine, py^ovided that the 
doctrine be 'such as is capable of being proved by miracles. See also, on the 
same question, Bishop Sherlock, Discourse x. ; Penrose, *0n the Evidence 
of the Scripture Miracles,' p. 212. 



Essay L] ON MIEACLES. 43 

sufficient to establish one.* And even the negative 
criterion, however valid as a general rule, is liable to 
error in its special applications. The certainty of the 
truths of natural religion does not guarantee the cer- 
tainty of all the conclusions which this or that man 
believes to be truths of natural religion, any more than 
the infallibility of Scripture guarantees the infallibility 
of every man's interpretation of Scripture. God can- 
not contradict Himself, whether He teaches through 
nature or through revelation ; but man may misinter- 
pret God's teaching through the one as well as through 
the other. 

27. In regarding the doctrinal criterion as properly 
relating to the question whether a true miracle has 
been wrought at all, we set aside, as unworthy of seri- 
ous consideration, the supposition which has sometimes 
been advanced in favour of an opposite view ; namely, 
that real miracles may possibly be performed by evil 
spirits in behalf of a false doctrine. This supposition, 
whatever may be its value as a theme for argumenta- 
tive ingenuity, is not one which we are practically 
called upon to consider by any of the actual circuni- 
stances w^ith which we are concerned. The objections 
which may justly be urged against Farmer's argument, 
when carried to the extent of denying the credibility 
of demoniacal miracles of any kind, do not apply to it 
when limited to such miracles as are wrought in evi- 
dence of a religion, and to the question, not of their 
theoretical possibility, but of their actual occurrence. 
It may be unsafe to reason d priori^ from our concep- 
tion of the Divine attributes, that the permission of 
such agency is inconceivable ; but we may fairly re- 
fuse to attach any practical importance to the supposi- 
tion, until some evidence is brought forward to show 

* Thus Bishop Atterbury, in his Sermon on ' Miracles the most proper 
way of proving the Divine Authority of any Religion/ says, " Though the 
badness of any doctrine, and its disagreeableness to the eternal rules of right 
reason, be a certain sign that it did not come from God, yet the goodness of 
it can be no infallible proof that it did." The same argument is handled in 
Rogers's ' Sermons on the Necessity of Divine Revelation,' pp. 60, 109, ed. 
1757. See also Warburton, 'Divine Legation,' b. ix., c. 5j Clarke, 'Evi- 
dence,' Prop. ix. 



44 AIDS TO FAITH, [Essay L 

that it has actually been realized. It remains yet to be 
shown that in all human experience any instance can 
be produced of a real miracle wrought by evil spirits 
for purposes of deception f" and until some probable 
grounds can be alleged in behalf of the fact, we have 
not sufficient means of judging concerning the theory. 
Doubtless, if it is consistent with God's Providence to 
permit such a temptation, He will also, with the temp- 
tation, make a way for us to escape ; but what that way 
will be, or how far the tempta^tion is consistent with 
God's Providence, we cannot decide beforehand : we 
must wait till some actual occurrence, with all its ac- 
companying circumstances, comes before us. The only 
real question at issue is not whether Christianity is a 
revelation from God or a delusion of Satan ; — a ques- 
tion which no sane man at the present time would 
think worthy of a serious discussion ; but whether it is 
of God or of man ; and, consequently, on w^iat grounds 
and to what extent it is entitled to the acceptance of 
mankind. What man has taught, man may revise and 
imj)rove. If the doctrines of Christianity are no other- 
wise of divine origin than as all human wisdom is the 
gift of God, they have, like other products of human 
wisdom, no further claim to be iaccepted than as they 
may be verified by the wisdom of later generations. 
In that case, we may listen to the teaching of Christ 
and His apostles as we listen to the teaching of human 
philosophers, with respect and gratitude, but not neces- 
sarily with submission : we claim a right to judge and 
sift, and it may be to reject, as our own reason shall 
determine us, acknowledging no other authority than 
that which is due to the wise and good of every gener- 
ation of mankind. But if, on the other hand, the doc- 
trines are given to us by Divine revelation such as no 
human wisdom can claim, they have a right to be re- 
ceived by virtue of the authority on which they rest, 
distinct from any which they may possess through their 
own intrinsic reasonableness or capability of verifica- 
tion. Of such a Divine authority miracles are the 

* See Penrose, ' On the Evidence of the Scripture Miracles/ p. 23. 



Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 45 

natural and proper proof; — a proof which all men are 
disposed naturally and instinctively to admit in prac- 
tice, whatever cavils may be raised against it on the 
ground of imaginary difficulties in theory. In the 
words of one of the ablest of the writers who have dis- 
cussed this point, " All natural scepticism on the sub- 
ject of miracles attaches to the question whether they 
were really performed, not, if performed, to the author- 
ity which they possess."^ For all real purposes of con- 
troversy, the question may be stated now, as it was 
stated by Gamaliel of old, whether the counsel and the 
work be of man or of God ; and the only serious in- 
quiry that can be raised concerning the miracles of 
Scripture is whether they were w^rought by the direct 
interposition of God, or were the result of human skill 
or other natural causes, — in other words, whether they 
were or were not really miracles at all. 

28. The question, then, only requires to be disen- 
tangled of its confusion to be very briefly answered. 
If it is considered theoretically and in the abstract 
with reference merely to the logical character of cei;- 
tain doctrines in themselves, and not to the circum- 
stances and needs of men, we may divide, as is usually 
done, the doctrines of religion into those w^hich are and 
those which are not discoverable by human reason; 
regarding the former as prior to revelation, and fur- 
nishing a negative criterion which no true revelation 
can contradict; while the latter are posterior to reve- 
lation, and rest immediately on the authority of a 
divinely commissioned teacher, and mediately on the 
proofs of his divine mission, whatever these may 
be.f And it is at this stage of the inquiry that the 
question concerning the evidential value of miracles 
properly comes in. A teacher who proclaims himself 
to be specially sent by God, and whose teaching is to 
be received on the authority of that mission, must, 
from the nature of the case, establish his claim by 
proofs of another kind than those which merely evince 
his human wisdom or goodness. A superhuman au- 
* Penrose, p. 24, t Compare Warburton, ' Divine Legation/ b. ix., c. 5. 



46 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essat I. 

thority needs to be substantiated by superhuman evi- 
dence ; and what is superhuman is miraculous. It is 
not the truth of the doctrines^ but the authority of the 
teacher^ that miracles are employed to prove ; and the 
authority being established, the truth of the doctrine 
follows from it. In this manner our Lord appeals to 
His miracles as evidences of his mission : " The works 
which the Father hath given me to finish, the same 
works that I do, bear witness of me that the Father 
hath sent me."* It is easy to say that we might have 
known Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, had He man- 
ifested Himself merely as a moral teacher, without the 
witness of miracles. It is easy to say this, because it 
is impossible io ])rove it. We cannot reverse the facts 
of history ; we cannot make the earthly life of Christ 
other than it was. As a matter of fact He did unite 
miraculous powers with pure and holy doctrine ; and, 
as a matter of fact. He did appeal to His miracles in 
proof of His divine authority. The miracles are a part 
of the portrait of Christ ; they are a part of that in- 
fluence which has made the history of the Christian 
(5hurch what it is. It is idle to speculate on what that 
history might have been had that influence been differ- 
ent. We have to do with revelation as w^e have to do 
with nature, — as God has been pleased to make it, not 
as He might have made it, had His wisdom been as 
ours. 

Such, even at its very lowest estimate, is the eviden- 
tial character of miracles from the abstract and theo- 
retical point of view. " The truths," says Bishop Atter- 
bury, " which are necessary in this manner to be at- 
tested are those which are of positive institution ; those 
which, if God had not pleased to reveal them, human 
reason could not have discovered ; and those which, 
even now they are revealed, human reason cannot fully 
account for and perfectly comprehend. Such, for ex- 
ample, are tlie doctrines of Baptism and the Supper of 
the Lord, of the Resurrection of the same Body, of the 
Distinction of Persons in the Unity of the Divine Es- 

* St. John V. 36. 



Essay I.] ON MIKACLES. 4(7 

sence, and of the Salvation of Mankind by the Blood 
and Intercession of Jesus. It is this kind of truths that 
God is properly said to reveal ; truths of which, unless 
revealed, we should have always continued ignorant; 
and 'tis in order only to prove those truths to have 
been really revealed, that we affirm miracles to be 
necessary."* 

29. But practically, in reference to the actual condi- 
tion and needs of men, the evidence of miracles has 
a far wider range, and includes all those doctrines, 
whether natural or revealed, which have at any time 
been taught or revived among men by the preaching 
of the Chrisfian Faith. This has been pointed out, 
with his usual practical wisdom, by Bishop Butler. 
" It is impossible," he says, " to say who would have 
been able to have reasoned out that w^hole system which 
w^e call natural religion, in its genuine simplicity, clear 
of superstition; but there is certainly no ground to 
affirm that the generality could. If they could, there 
is no sort of probability that they would. Admitting 
there were, they would highly want a standing admo- 
nition to remind them of it, and inculcate it upon 
them." To the same effect ho continues : " It may 
possibly be disputed how far miracles can prove nat- 
ural religion ; and notable objections may be urged 
against this proof of it, considered as a matter of spec- 
ulation ; but, considered as a practical thing, there can 
be none. For suppose a person to teach natural relig- 
ion to a nation who had lived in total ignorance or 
forge tfulness of it ; and to declare he w^as commissioned 
by God to do so ; suppose him, in proof of his com- 
mission, to foretell things future, wdiich no human fore- 
sight could have guessed at ; to divide the sea with a 
word ; feed great multitudes with bread from heaven ; 
cure all manner of diseases ; and raise the dead, even 
himself, to life : would not this give additional credi- 
bility to his teaching — a credibility beyond what that 
of a common man would have ; and be an authorita- 

* * Miracles the proper way of proving the Divine Authority of any Relig- 
ion/ Sermons (1734), vol. 1. p. 215. See also Bishop Sherlock, Discourse x. 



48 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 

live publication of the law of nature, Le. a new proof 
of it? It would be a practical one, of tlie strongest 
kind, perhaps, which human creatures are capable of 
having given them."'^ 

In this passage, the good sense of Butler has solved 
the question in its practical aspect, leaving the theo- 
retical difficulty in its proper insignificance. Xo doubt, 
if we are at liberty to suppose a totally difierent state of 
things from the actual one, we may deduce a great 
number of hypothetical consequences concerning what 
might have been the case, but is not. If all men 
possessed a perfect system of natural religion, no author- 
itative publication of natural truth would be needed ; 
and no teaching which contradicted men's natural belief 
would have any claim to be received. And so, 'if all 
men were possessed of perfect bodily health, no med- 
icine would be needed to give it them ; and any medi- 
cine which tended to alter their state of health would 
be injurious. Unhappily, both suppositions are untrue 
and the conclusions practically fall to the ground with 
them. It may be granted that the authority of which 
miracles are a proof is but an accidental and relative 
evidence of truths of this character. Still, the accident 
is one which has extended over the greater part of 
mankind ; and the relation is coextensive with it. And 
this consideration must serve to modify in practice the 
negative criterion which is allowed to be valid in theory. 
In whatever degree any man does not possess a perfect 
natural religion, in the same degree he is liable to error 
in judging of the truth of a revelation solely from 
internal evidence. And even the man who, in the pres- 
ent day, claims the right to exercise such a judgment, 
may be reminded that the knowledge on which his 
claim is based is in no small degree owing to that very 
authoritative teaching on which his judgment is to be 
passed : — aTreXaKnae KaOairepel ra iroiKdpia ryevvrjOevra 
Tr}v firjTepa. " The fact," says Mr. Davison, "is not to 
be denied ; the religion of Nature has had the opportu- 

* * Analogy/ part ii., ch, i. 



Essay I] ON MIEACLES. 49 

nity of rekindling her faded taper by the Gospel light, 
whether furtively or unconsciously taken. Let her not 
dissemble the obligation and the conveyance, and make 
a boast of the splendour, as though it were originally 
her own, or had always in her hands been sufficient for 
the illumination of the world."* 

30. The whole question of the value of miracles as 
evidences of Christianity must, in fact, be answered by 
means of the same distinction on which depends the 
question of their credibility ; — the distinction, namely, 
between God's general manifestations of Himself in 
the ordinary course of nature, and His special mani- 
festation of Himself by supernatural signs. Those who 
deny the existence of any special revelation of religious 
truths, distinct from that general sense in which man's 
reason itself and all that it can discover are the gifts of 
Him from whom every good thing comes ; — those who 
deny that any teaching has been made to man by 
special inspiration of particular teachers, in a sense 
different from that in which all holy desires, all good 
counsels, and all just works proceed from the inspiration 
of the Holy Spirit ; — such persons are only consistent 
when they deny that miracles have any value as evi- 
dences of religious truth, and are still more consistent 
if they deny that such works have ever been wrought. 
If religion teaches nothing but what every man, by 
God's grace, may discover, or at least verify, for aimself, 
the distinction between natural and revealed religion 
ceases to exist, and with it the distinction between 
natural and supernatural evidences of the truth. If the 
ordinary witness of man's reason or conscience is 
sufficient for all purposes of religion, the extraordinary 
witness becomes superfluous if it agrees with this, and 
pernicious if it differs from it. But this absolute 
sufficiency of the natural reason is the very point which 
history and philosophy concur to call in question. 

31. The following words of a learned and thoughtful 
prelate of the English Church may be cited and adopted 

* ' Discourses on Prophecy,' p. 6 (4th edition). 
3 



50 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essat I. 

as expressing the conclusions whicli I have endeavour- 
ed, however imperfectly, to establish in common with 
him : " It appears, then, on a review of the preceding 
arguments, that the Scripture miracles stand on a solid 
basis, which no reasoning can overthrow. Their jpos- 
sibility cannot be denied without denying the very na- 
ture of God as an all-powerful Being : their jprobcibility 
cannot be questioned without questioning His moral 
perfections : and their certainty, as matters of fact, can 
only be invalidated by destroying the very foundations 
of all human testimony. 

" Upon these grounds we may safely leave the 
subject in the hands of any wise and considerate man : 
and we may venture to affirm that no person of such a 
character will, after an attentive examination of these 
points, ever suffer his faith in the miracles, by which 
the Divine authority of the Christian revelation is 
supported, to be shaken. Convinced that, by a fair 
chain of reasoning, every one who denies them must be 
driven to the necessity of maintaining atheistical prin- 
ciples, by questioning either the power, or wisdom, or 
goodness of the Creator, the true philosopher will yield 
to the force of this consideration, as well as to the over- 
powering evidences of the facts themselves ; and will 
thankfully accept the dispensation which God hath 
thus graciously vouchsafed to reveal. He will suffer 
neither wit, nor ridicule, nor sophistry, to rob him of 
this anchor of his faith ; but will turn to his Saviour 
with the confidence so emphatically expressed by 
Nicodemus : ' Kabbi, we kkow that thou art a Teacher 
come from God ; for no man can do these miracles 
that Thou doest, except God be with him.' "^ 

To these remarks, which are applicable to every age 
and race of men to whom the Christian evidences may 
come, it may perhaps not be inappropriate to add a 
further observation having a more especial reference 
to ourselves. The very attacks which have been made, 
in the supposed interests of science, upon the miracu- 

* Van Mildert, ' Boyle Lectures/ Sermon xxi. 



Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 52 

lous element of the Gospel narrative, may themselves 
serve, if rightly considered, to give to that very element 
a new significance, and to point to a moral pm-pose 
more discernible now than of old. An age of advanced 
physical knowledge has its especial temptations, no less 
than its especial privileges. Few indeed, it is trusted, 
will be fomid to repeat what one great scientific teacher 
of the present century has been found to assert, that 
the heavens declare, not the glory of God, but only the 
glory of the astronomer. Yet this bold and profane 
language is only the extreme expression of a tendency 
against which an age like the present has especial need 
to watch and pray. Against such a tendency it is no 
small safeguard that men of science should be trained 
from their earliest childhood in records which at every 
page tell of the personal presence of Him by whom all 
things were made, manifested in direct control over the 
delegated workings of His visible creation. It is but 
one form of His perpetual presence wdtli His Church, 
that in founding a Faith destined to ally itself with the 
intellectual cultivation of all succeeding generations. 
He should have founded it in such a manner as to fur- 
nish, in the record of its origin, a lesson of the spirit in 
which that cultivation should be pursued, and a safe- 
guard against the perils to which it is especially ex- 
posed. If there are times when the very vastness of 
the material system which science discloses seems to 
thrust the Author of all to an almost infinite distance 
from us ; — if there are times when we feel almost tempt- 
ed to echo the wish of the poet, to be " a Pagan 
suckled in a creed outworn," so that we might but 
have a clearer sight of the presence of Deity among the 
phenomena of nature; — if there are times when the 
heaven that is over our heads seems to be brass, and 
the earth that is under us to be iron, and we feel our 
hearts sink within us under the calm pressure of un- 
yielding and unsympathizing Law, as those of the 
disciples of old sank within them under the stormy vio- 
lence of wind and wave ; — at such times we may iearn 
our lesson and feel our consolation, as we turn to those 



52 AIDS TO FAITH. [EssAT I. 

vivid pictures which our Sacred Story portrays of the 
personal power of the Incarnate God visibly ruling His 
creation ; and may hear through them the present voice 
of Him who spake on the waters, "Be of good cheer; 
it is I ; be not afraid." 



ESSAY II. 

ON THe'sTUDY of the evidences of CHRISTIANITY. 



COJTTENTS OF ESSAY n. 



1. IXTEODTJCTION. 

2. Eeaction against the study of Evi- 

dences. 

3. Circumstances of the Infidel Contro- 

versy in the ~lTth and ISth centu- 
ries. 

4. Change of position of Christian apolo- 

gists occasioned by change of tactics 
of Infidels. 

5. Internal condition of the Church. 

6. Else of the Methodist and Evangeli- 

cal movement — its excesses. 

7. Want of Church activity. 

8. The " ]^e-w Birth " preached by 

Whitfield and the Wesleys. 

9. Decay of theological learning among 

the Evangelical leaders. 

10. Ultimate development of false princi- 

ples when left unchecked. 

11. Influences loosing men's hold upon the 

Historical element in Christianity — 
German ]S''eology. 

12. Charms of the foreign literature— In- 

fluence of the nejv opinions on the 
current literature of the country — 
Eeligion regarded as an affair of sen- 
timent. 

13. Inadequacy of the system to meet the 

mere moral wants of man — protest 
against the foundation of the whole 
theory. 



14. A religion disentangled from all his 

torical inquiries, and commending 
itself to the mind by its intrinsic 
beauty and suitability to man's wants 
and wishes, is not CJtiristianity. 

15. The essential connexion of Christian- 

ity with the history of past ages ad- 
vances civilization wherever Chris- 
tianity prevails. 

16. Disadvantages of the mean and illit- 

erate in judging of the historical ev- 
idences of Christianity. 

17. Direct evidence within the reach of 

the humbler classes. 

18. Development of critical inquiry 

abroad has diminished the difficul- 
ties of comparatively unlearned 
readers. 

19. Origin of the Christian religion not a 

very remote event — Absurdity of tho 
mythical theory as apphed to it. 

20. Strauss's 'Life of Jesus' merely the 

working out of a foregone conclu- 
sion — Insufficiency of the theories 
of Strauss's successors — Causes and 
remedies of the present panic — Dan- 
ger of concentrating a whole system 
of belief upon a single point— Eo- 
manist creed. 

21. Order in which sceptical objections 

are to be dealt with. 

22. Yery little new matter to be produced 

by Infidelity — Conclusion. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 



1. " Evidences of Cliristianity ! " exclaims the late 
Mr. Coleridge in one of the most popular of his prose- 
works, " I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the 

want of it and you may safely trust it to its 

own evidence." 

There can be little doubt, I think, that these words 
express the prevailing sentiments of a very considerable 
number of Christians at the present day ; and it cannot 
be denied that, for many years back, there has been a 
general distaste for that apologetic religious literature 
which was popular in the last century. 

2. This has doubtless been greatly owing to a Reac- 
tion from the disproportionate attention paid to such 
literature by the Divines of a former age, and has taken 
place in virtue of that general rule which seems to or- 
dain that an over value of any hranch of knowledge in 
one generation shall he attended hy an unjust deprecia- 
tion of it in the next. The argumentative vakie of 
things even so important as the evidences of religion 
may, unquestionably, engross the public mind too 
much ; and he who is continually occupied in contem- 
plating and stating the proofs of its truth will fail of 
reaching the just standard of a Christian teacher, or a 
Christian man. Such a person will be like a prince 
who employs all his time, and strength, and resources 
in raising fortresses about a territory which he does not 
carefully govern ; or like a landlord who lives but to 
accumulate muniments of an estate which he neglects to 
till. But the folly of such conduct would be no excuse 
for suffering our frontiers to lie open, or our title-deeds 
to be lost. Yet something very like such advice is 



56 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 

sometimes offered to us. Our forefathers, perhaps, 
were too apt to include all strong energy of emotion 
and play of fancy in their general and unsparing cen- 
sures of enthusiasm ; and some of us are disposed to 
redress the balance by appealing exclusively to the 
imagination and the feelings. We see that it will not 
do to address the head alone, and therefore we will not 
address it at all, but speak only to the heart. 

I^ow, it is important to observe that this reaction 
was so far from springing from any failure of the apolo- 
gists in their proper work, that it would hardly have 
been possible if that work had not been thoroughly 
done. Their proper work was to drive the infidel 
writers of their own age out of the field ; and never 
was task more completely accomplished. ISTo litera- 
ture, of any recent date, has perished more completely 
than the infidel literature of the early and middle parts 
of the last century. 

Ips^ periere ruinaa. 

It is only some curious antiquary, loving to parade 
forgotten lore, who now searches the pages of such 
writers as Toland or Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, 
and Coward, and Collins — though some of them were 
really men of parts, and all conspicuous in their day. 
Their very names, indeed, would have passed wholly 
from remembrance, but that some of them were an- 
swered in works which " posterity will not easily let 
die ; " and almost all are found by the young student 
of theology enumerated by Leland in his ' Yiew of the 
Deistical "Writers.'* They survive, like the heroes of 
the ' i^ewgate Calendar,' in the annals of that public 
justice which chastised their faults. 

3. The long controversy with the infidels assumed, 
in the course of it, many forms. But these changes of 
position, on the part of the defenders of Christianity, 
were caused by the changing tactics of their assailants, 

* " The best book," says Burke, " that ever has been written against 
these people, is that in which the author has collected in a body the whole of 
the infidel code, and has brought their writings into one body, to cut them 
all off together." — Speech on Rdief of Protestant Dissenters^ 1773. 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 5^ 

who, when driyen from one point of attack, immediate- 
ly occupied a new one. 

The necessity for an English apologetic * literature 
began to be felt even before the Restoration, and is at- 
tested by snch works as Jeremy Taylor's ' Moral De- 
monstration,' and Hammond's remarkable little tract 
on the ' Evidences of Religion.' After it, still more. 
The press, indeed, was not yet free to the infidels 
(though Hobbs, by masking his attack on all religion 
and morality under the form of a defence of despotism, 
contrived to evade its restrictions) ; but it is plain, from 
incidental notices, that sceptical objections were largely 
circulated in MS. and in conversation. Men read, in 
secret, authors whose names sound strange to this gen- 
eration — Averroes, Jordanes Brunus, Cardan, Pompo- 
natius, Yanini ; and their doubts, denied a free expres- 
sion, festered into grotesque and monstrous forms of 
atheism, of which Smith, and More, and Cudworth 
occasionally reveal to us portentous specimens. Learn- 
ing, too, was beginning to suggest literary difficulties, 
of which we have indications in Isaac Yossius and Sir 
John Marsham. 

It was in this state of things that those two great 
works, Cudworth's ' Intellectual System,' and Stilling- 
fleet's ' Origines Sacrge,' f were published. They were 
certainly very far from being popular and easy defences 

* It has been supposed that our early Reformers, conscious of the weak- 
ness of external proofs, rested the authority of Scripture wholly upon its 
self-evidencing light. But the doctrine of the self-evidencing light had quite 
a different origin. The schoolmen had erected theology into a science, 
properly so called, which required principles as certain as those of natural 
science. They could not find such a certainty in moral evidence, and there- 
fore had recourse to supernatural light. The Reformers partook in their 
mistake in requiring an assent out of proportion to the evidence ; but sub- 
stituted the infallible Scripture as its object for the infallible Church. The 
true distinction between assent and adhesion M^as drawn by Hooker in his 
great sermon on the ' Faith of the Elect,' and, after him, by Jackson, Works, 
vol. iii., Oxford, 1841. 

+ Let any competent person read the chapters on Ancient History in the 
first book of the ' Origines,'and the account of the laws against the Christians 
in b. ii. c. 9, and he will see that those who sneer at that great work are 
themselves the proper objects of pity or contempt. Stilliugfleet, in his old 
age, and when his temper had been spoiled by flattery, and his faculties 
decayed by years, engaged foolishly in a controversy with Locke, in which 
he did not appear to advantage. Yet he singled out most of those points 
which later metaphysicians have deemed the weak points in Locke's harness. 
3* 



58 ^IDS TO FAITH. [EsbayII 

of religion, but they were not intended as replies to 
popular attacks. They were the weapons in a war of 
giants. 

" Kon jaculo, neque enim jaculo vitam ille dedisset, 
Sed magnum stridens contorta Falarica venit." 

Those who despise them have probably never read, and 
certainly never understood, them. 

4. The point of attack was now gradually changed. 
Science was every day bringing fresh aids to religion. 
Before the arguments of More, and Cudworth, and 
Green, and Ray, and Boyle, and Clarke, the position 
of Atheism was generally abandoned as untenable. 
The divines had proved to their opponents that there 
was snch a thing as natural religion ; and those oppo- 
nents now adopted that system of natural religion, 
which had been reasoned out for them, as their own ; 
declared its proofs to have been always so clear and 
convincing that nothing but the artifices of priestcraft 
could have obscured them ; and contended that revela- 
tion should at once be set aside as a superfluous incum- 
brance of its perfection.* The war-cry now was, " The 
sufficiency of natural religion ! " The points in Chris- 
tianity now selected for attack were those peculiar to it 
as distinguished from natural religion. It was con- 
tended that miracles were incredible, or utterly insignifi- 
cant ; that God could not give a particular revelation ; 
that He could not have selected a chosen people ; that 
He could not accept a vicarious atonement ; that the 
Gospel doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments 
subverted morality by making it mercenary, &c. It 
was such objections as these that drew forth the mas- 
terpieces of Clarke, and Butler,f and Warburton. In 

* See some admirable remarks upon the latest form of the same prejudice 
in Dr. Salmon's ' Sermons preached in Trinity College, Dublin,' (Macrnillan, 
1861), pp. 160-165. 

t I have seen a curious criticism upon Butler's style, in which his disuse 
of technical terms is accounted for by saying that he was essentially a Stoic, 
and may be compared with " Epictetus, Antoninus, and Plutarch," who 
moralized in the language of common life. The Stoics, I had always thought, 
were rather remarkable for the use of technical terms. " Ex omnibus Philo- 
sophis," says Cicero, " Stoici plurima uovaverunt. Zeno quoque, eorum 
princeps, non tam rerum inventor fuit quam novorum verborum."— Z>e 
Finibus, lib. iii. c. 2. And most persons who have looked into Antoninus 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 59 

their hands the cause of religion was safe ; but, in its 
management by less sagacious writers, one disastrous 
mistake was committed, the influence of which was long 
felt to the injury of the Church. 

In the early stage of the controversy it was the infi- 
dels who maintained (with Hobbes and Spinoza) the 
selfish system of morals, and the defenders of religion 
who asserted the nobler doctrine that virtue was an 
end in itself. So much, indeed, was this the case, that 
hardly anything excited more the general outcry 
against Locke's ' Essay ' than the supposition that his 
denial of innate ideas destroyed the proper foundation 
of ethics. But, in time, Locke was discovered to have 
been a Christian ; and the Platonic theory of virtue 
was turned by Shaftesbury (his somewhat ungenerous 
pupil) into a support of naturalism, and an engine for 
assailing Christianity. This circumstance unhappily 
prejudiced some of the leading divines against even 
what was soundest in Shaftesbury's writings. They 
saw an accidental gain, in proving the necessity of rev- 
elation to assure man that the practice of virtue was, 
under all circumstances, his dearest interest, and they 
caught at it too eagerly. Thus " Hamlet and Laertes 
changed rapiers," and some of the champions of Truth 
disgraced themselves by using the poisoned weapon 
which they had wrested from the maintainers of error. 

But, though some oversights were committed in the 
conduct of the war, the issue of the conflict was not, on 
the whole, doubtful. And now, again, the position had 
to be altered to meet a new assault. Lord Bolingbroke 
gave the signal by complaining that " divines had taken 
much silly pains to establish mystery on metaphysics, 
revelation on philosophy, and matters of fact on ab- 
stract reasoning. Religion, " he says truly — " such as 
the Christian, which appeals to facts — must be proved 
as all other facts that pass for authentic are proved. 

will agree with his editor that, so far from taking his diction from common 
life, " utitur vocibus plane suis, quas raro apud alios autores invenias." As 
for Plutarch, one is surprised to hear that he was a Stoic. He is commonly 
supposed to have wi"itten some rather smart treatises against the Stoics. 



go AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 

If they are tlms proyed, the religion will prevail with- 
ont the assistance of so much, profound reasoning.* 

To the proof of religion, then, as a matter of fact, 
the Christian divines addressed themselves : and as 
the points to be considered in this view were the credi- 
bility of the prime witnesses to the miracnlons facts of 
Christianity, and the trnstworthiness of the tradition by 
which theii' testimony has been delivered down to ns, 
it was these which were the chief subjects of the apolo- 
getic literatm-e which may be said to terminate in the 
works of Lardnerf and Paley. 

But though the defenders of Christianity had been 
expressly challenged to this field of argument, it was 
one into which their antagonists showed little serious 
disposition to follow them. Certainly Lord Boling- 
broke's own performances, in his ' Eemarks on the 
Canon of Scripture,' and the historical speculations 
which are scattered in his ' Fragments,' were not very 
formidable to the faith. Gradually the attack upon 
revealed religion fell into the hands of persons too ig- 
norant and too manifestly unscrupulous to produce 
much effect upon the educated part of the public. 
Such writers as Burgh and Paine might do mischief 
among the lower classes ; but they can hardly fill a 
place in any literary history. 

Two really illustrious names do, indeed, close the 
catalogue of the infidels of the last century — Hume and 
Gibbon.:}: But neither appeared as an ojpeii assailant of 
Christianity, and neither owes his chief fame to those 

* See Warburton's 'Doctrine of Grace.' 

t '*I should be ungrateful," says Mr. Westcott, "not to bear witness to 
the accuracy and fulness of Larduer's ' Credibility ; ' for, howeyer imperfect 
it may be in the yiew which it giyes of the earliest period of Christian litera- 
ture, it is, unless I am mistaken, more complete and trustworthy than any 
work which has been written since on the same subject." — History of the 
Canon, p. 9. 

X In reference to the supposed difficulties and discouragements under 
which infidels labour, it is worth obserying that both Hume and Gibbon 
held lucratiye situations under Goyernment. At an earlier period it was 
Walpole's policy to patronize some of the most rabid and indecent assailants 
of religion ; and, until the intidels had been thoroughly refuted b}- the 
weapons both of wit and argument, the most open ayowal of their opinions 
was rather a recommendation to what was called " polite society." A strong 
reaction in the tone of popular literature began with Steele and Addison. 



Essay IL] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY qi 

parts of his writings in whicli Christianity was assailed. 
After them infidelity in England appeared to have 
sheathed its sword, furled its banner, and retired from 
the field. 

/ 5. But what, meanwhile, was the internal condition 
of the Church ? It w^as (to recur to a former compari- 
son) too much like an estate after the decision of a long 
suit in Chancery to settle a litigated title. The contro- 
versy with the "^ infidels had not been the only one of 
that busy century. It was an age of a thousand con- 
troversies. There was the great JSTonjuring Controver- 
sy, in which political rancour was still more embittered 
by the gall of the odium tlieologicwn. There was the 
great Bangorian Controversy, growing out of the for- 
mer, and draining into it all the poisoned dregs of its 
predecessor. There was the great Convocation Contro- 
versy, which changed country parsons into clerical 
Hampdens, and ranged High Church divines in strange 
antagonism against the royal supremacy. There was 
the great Trinitarian Controversy, begun by Clarke and 
Waterland, and continued by a host of inferior writers, 
till the public grew weary of the very thought of Pa- 
tristic literature.* These and countless minor ones dis- 
tracted the attention of churchmen from observing the 
spiritual destitution that was spreading widely around 
them amidst all this polemical activity. The brilliant 
services of the tongue and pen in defending Christian- 
ity, or orthodoxy, or even faction, eclipsed the less 
showy, but not less real, and far more generally requi- 
site, usefulness of the pastoral care, in its ordinary 
forms of teaching and admonition. Prelates forsook 
their dioceses for the nobler work of writing controver- 
sy, or asserting the political interests of their order. 
Discipline became relaxed ; parishes were neglected ; 
and at the end of the century the Church found itself 
surrounded with a swarming population, and no ade- 

* Warburton made an effort, in the preface to his ' Julian,' to restore the 
Fathers to some credit, and to put their character in a favourable light: and, 
in return, he has been charged with ." disdain and ignorance of Catholic 
theology." 



62 -^IDS TO FAITH. [Essay IL 

quate machinery provided for dealing with this mass 
of ignorance. 

It is not true, I think, that the bulk of the lower 
orders had been leavened with infidelity.^ Their hea- 
thenism was negative, not positive ; they had been 
suffered to grow up in gross ignorance of religion : and 
it was during the prevalence of such evils that the evan- 
gelical reaction — commencing with the Methodist move- 
ment — began. 

6. But it would be an error, I apprehend, to sup- 
pose that it was "Whitfield and the Wesleys who origi- 
nated a Keformation. Long before them it appears 
manifest that a healthy reaction had set in. As the 
old panic dread of fanaticism abated on the one hand, 
and the necessities of continual controversy became less 
on the other, preachers insisted more and more on the 
peculiarities of the Christian faith as the springs and 
motives of Gospel obedience. Energetic efforts were 
made to build new churches and establish schools 
throughout the country : and (what is always a hope- 
ful sign) some zeal began to be felt for foreign missions, 
and some sense of responsibility, for the religious state 
of our colonies. A change for the better was going on. 
The case of Whitfield and the Wesleys was that of other 
energetic men whose names figure in history as the 
originators of mighty changes. They fling themselves 
into a great movement before it has become conspicu- 
ous to the vulgar eye : they put themselves at its head ; 
they carry it on to extravagance, and thus accelerate 
and extend an impulse which they partially miisdirect, 
and may ultimately spoil forever. 

The Methodists, then, had not to convert the English 
population to a 'belief in Christianity ; but they had to 
awaken a sense of the Christian religion in men who 
had been so long thinking of it as a thing to be proved 

* Even that of the upper was greatly overrated : " The truth of the case," 
says Hurd, a cool observer, " is no more than this. A few fashionable men 
make a noise in the world ; and this clamour being echoed on all sides from 
the shallow circles of their admirers, misleads the unwary into an opinion 
that the irreligious spirit is universal and uncontrollable." — See the whole 
i, ' Sei'mons on Frojphecy^ sermon xii., conclusion. 



Essay IL] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. g3 

that they had forgotten that it was also a thing to be 
felt and acted on ; and they had to teach even the ele- 
ments of that religion to vast nnmbers of an outlying 
mass beyond the range of ordinary instrnction. This 
V7as the appropriate work to which the circumstances 
of the times really called tliem. Bnt, besides the pres- 
sure of these real wants, there ivere other cravings of 
the popular mind demanding satisfaction. There was 
(what is to be found in every generation) the great herd 
of superficial minds who always require the stimulus 
of something new ; who throw the blame of their own 
shallowness upon their teachers, and are always asking 
for something more " deep and earnest and thorough- 
going," or '' more rational and suited to the age," than 
the current theology, whatever it may be. This is the 
common sequacious mob of " novarum rerum avidi," 
who are drawn, like insects, by the loudest noise and 
the greatest glare. This movable, and indeed restless 
multitude, swells the decuman wave of every great 
movement, and retires with its ebb, only to return again 
on the crest of its successor. ITor can it be reasonably 
doubted that many of those amiable but weak persons 
who have latterly been roving over England in the garb 
of Passionists and Oratorians would have Been, in the 
days of Whitfield's popularity, preaching rank Method- 
isrii on Kennington Common, amidst a shower of mud 
and turnip-tops. 

There was, then, in the first place, the call for some- 
thing new. But there was also the call for something 
fanatical. The terrible experience of the seventeenth 
century had left a deep impression on the beginning of 
the eighteenth, of dread and bitter scorn of fanaticism. 
In the wild tumult of the Commonwealth the nation 
had been, as it were, drunk with religious enthusiasm ; 
and, in shame and grief at the remembrance of that 
horrible debauch and all its crimes, they had hastily 
vowed a total abstinence from those feelings which 
Hartley describes under the odd but convenient term 
Theopathy. But a wild career of another kind of 
drunkenness had done much to efface that impression 



64 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 

before the close of that century ; and the hypocrisy of 
the Puritans had been thrown into the shade by the 
brazen profligacy of the race who succeeded them. 
Enthusiasm was again eagerly demanding its turn for 
gratification. 

7. Furthermore, there was a want that has been 
less often remarked as one of the causes of Methodism 
— ^the want of what may be called a freer Church-ac- 
tivity. The busy, bustling democratic spirit of ultra- 
Protestantism had made itself so hateful in the previous 
generation, that, within the Church, laymen shrank 
from meddling. The synodical assemblies of the clergy 
had only spasmodic fits of action, in w^hich they either 
tore themselves, or made violent assaults on others. 
Their time and energies were wasted in disputes be- 
tween the two Houses, disputes with the Crown, dis- 
putes with obnoxious brethren ; — till, at last, their 
action became so manifestly scandalous that the Minis- 
ter was able to silence them entirely, to the genei^al 
satisfaction of a public who had ceased to be enter- 
tained by their quarrels."^ Thus they no longer broke 
the dull monotony of quiet which it was the policy of 
Walpole to maintain per fas' aut nefas. 

" The Convocation gaped, but could not speak." 
Outside the Church, dissent had been crushed by 
the rigorous laws of Charles II., and the general disgust 
and contempt of the nation, so efi'ectually, that it could 
not recover when the Toleration came. The Dissenting 
teachers were generally either hard, dry, and narrow 
Calvinistical divines ; or men of enlarged and liberal 
sentiments, disgusted with their own communion, and 
no longer retaining the old prejudices against surplices 
and rochettes, but kept from conformity, partly by he- 
reditary pride, and partly by dislike to the doctrinal 
fetters of subscription to the Articles and Liturgy.f 

^' Like the old comedy — 

" Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi." 

t See the notices of negotiations foi' a comprehension in Doddridge's Cor- 
respondence, and compare the language of Harewood : " Our separation is 
not founded in vestments and surplices, in liturgies, crosses, and geuu- 
flexions, in godfathers, godmothers, and rotatory motions, — it is Athanasius 
who drives us from your altars." — Five Dissertations (1772), p. 63. 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY g5 

How far an ultra-liberalism had leavened the Dissent- 
ing teachers became manifest v^hen the Arian move- 
ment carried, at one sweep, the whole body of the 
English Presbyterians, and a great part of the Irish, 
into a heresy most remote from the traditions of their 
forefathers. 

Thus, within the Church and without, there was a 
demand beginning to be felt for some free and stirring 
ecclesiastical activity ; the thought of which men had 
ceased to associate with any of the old organizations. 

8. In such a state of predisposition, Whitfield and 
the Wesleys began their work by preaching the New 
BiETH. The term had doubtless a sound and valuable 
meaning. But, in that sense it meant, not the produc- 
tion of a new helief^ but of a new sense of the reality 
and importance of momentous truths involved in what 
had been already assented to. 

These two things are frequently confounded by 
careless thinkers ; but, in reality, they are quite dif- 
ferent : and the difference is observable, not only in 
religious, but in ethical matters, and in the affairs of 
common life. In all practical matters, mere belief, or 
acquiescence, is one thing ; and that belief, quickened 
into a sense of reality, and touching all the springs of 
action, is another : and, in all practical matters, the 
most mischievous consequences may result from con- 
founding together such different things. It would be 
a great mistake to fancy that Faith had been produced 
as soon as ever the mind had been brought to recognize 
the connection of a conclusion with unimpeachable pre- 
misses : and it would be a great mistake, on the other 
hand, to suppose that all processes of reasoning might 
be discarded, and nothing consulted or addressed but 
the fancy and the emotions. " Going over the theory 
of virtue " may indeed, as Butler has pointed out, not 
only fail to make a man practically moral, but tend to 
deaden the sense of moral truths, by weakening their 
practical, as it shows their rational, associations. But 
we should not therefore listen to a hotheaded reformer 
like Housseau, who would urge us to cast aside all 



66 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 

theory and reasoning in morals, and attend to nothing 
but the immediate dictates of the heart. 

Into such confusions and mistakes, however, the 
leaders of the Evangelical movement Tvere rapidlv be- 
gniled by theii- own sndden and widely-spread success. 
They taught (and taught rightly) that we must not only 
believe, but feel, before we can act, as Christians. In 
recalling attention to the truth that the Gosjjel is a reve- 
lation of God's love to sinners, designed to produce 
corresponding affections in our hearts — that the faith 
of Christ is a faith that works through love, they did 
valuable service, which should never be dissembled or 
forgotten. But unhappily they went on to teach that 
the belief and the action were to be grounded upon the 
feelings, considered as the immediate and sensible opera- 
tion of the Holy Spirit upon the human mind. 

Xow such a preposterous mistake as this could 
hardly have been possible for the general acquiescence 
of the national mind in the truth of the Christian relig- 
ion. For I am persuaded that none except the very 
wildest fanatics (and the leaders of whom I speak were 
certainly not mere wild fanatics) do really thus wholly 
ground their faith upon an imaginary inspiration. 
There is, in almost all cases, a secret tacit reference in 
the bottom of the heart to some fixed external standard 
by which the extravagances of fancy and feeling are 
moderated and kej)t in check. The Methodists could 
assume the general truth of Christianity as 2iposhdahira. 
They could assume that there was a Holy Spirit ; they 
could assume the necessary coincidence of His teaching 
in the heart with His teaching in the Holy Scriptures ; 
and they could try the former by the latter. In the 
first fervours of their preaching they j)lainly were 
tempted to appeal to the agitations which it produced 
in the minds and bodies of their converts as a sort of 
miraculous attestation of its truth ; but experience 
soon convinced the shrewder of them that such evi- 
dence could not be relied upon, and that the true ap- 
peal must be made elsewhere. But the logical vicioiis- 
ness of the circle in which the mind moves in such 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. g^ 

cases can only be hidden from it when the external 
authority on which it falls back is thought of as some- 
thing imquestioned and unquestionable. It is only in 
reference to heretics, who hold in common with himself 
the inspiration of Scripture, that the Romanist can be 
guilty of the absurdity of proving his Church by the 
Scriptures, and the Scriptures by his Church. When 
dealing with the infidel, he must proceed, just as other 
Christians proceed, by the way of moral evidence ; and 
from the ' Summa contra Gentiles ' of Aquinas down 
to the ' Principia ' of Abbe Hooke, this is the way in 
which Roman Catholic as well as Protestant apologists 
have proceeded in the argument against infidelity. So, 
also, when one enthusiast meets another of opposite 
sentiments, but with persuasions as strong, feelings as 
lively, satisfaction as complete, and inward peace as 
perfect as his own, each is driven to " try the spirit " 
of his antagonist by some external test, forgetting that, 
upon his own principles, that standard itself was only 
known by the inward discernment which it is now em- 
ployed to control. Where such a standard is unhesi- 
tatingly admitted by both, the fallacy may be long 
concealed ; but as soon as its authority comes to be 
generally and openly questioned, the mistake becomes 
patent, and can only be corrected by abandoning the 
false principle which has produced the mischief. 

One circumstance which contributed to favour the 
Methodistic exaggerations upon this subject was, that 
the doctrine of the influence of the Holy Spirit had 
been one comparatively reserved in the preaching of 
the preceding half-century. I do not mean that it 
was denied, or even wholly omitted. Such strong 
and wholesale charges against the teaching of the 
Church at that period are often made ; but they are 
wholly without foundation. But when referred to in* 
more than a general way, the reference was usually for 
the purpose of guarding against fanatical extravagance 
— for correcting the abuse rather than illustrating the 
use of that doctrine ; for showing rather what was not^ 
than what was implied in it. 



68 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay li 

It was not strange, therefore, if, in tlieir ardour to 
develop fully, on its positive side, this cardinal Chris- 
tian doctrine of a free and intimate communion between 
God in Christ and the human soul, the evangelical 
leaders were tempted to overstep the bounds of so- 
briety ; and to forget that the Holy Spirit is given not 
to supersede, or supply the place of any of our natural 
faculties, but to help their infirmity, and restore them 
to that just balance and due subordination — that proper 
and healthful exercise — which have been disturbed by 
sin. From Him, indeed, " all holy desires, all good 
counsels, and all just works do proceed ; " but we must 
first determine that our desires are holy, our counsels 
good, and our works just, before we can, without intol- 
erable rashness, attribute them to that sacred infiuence ; 
and w^e cannot detemine that by the mere strength of 
our persuasions, or the vividness of our fancies, or the 
depth and earnestness of our feelings, without opening 
a way for every wild extravagance that can support 
itself on strong persuasion, vivid fancy, and deep and 
earnest feeling. 

Bvt, in the flush and fervour of their triumph, 
and the general silence of the advocates of infidelity, 
the .evangelical leaders went on securely — comparing 
proudly their own achievements with the performances 
of their predecessors — and declaring that they needed 
no other evidences than the manifest adaptation of their 
doctrine to the wants of mankind, and its living power, 
when received, to regenerate a sinful race. 

9. The natural consequence of all this was an exten- 
sive decay of theological learniDg. A few leading doc- 
trines were, for them, the essence of the Gospel, and 
their preaching, in too many cases, became little more 
than a monotonous repetition of those doctrines. For 
such a ministry neither deep research nor accurate 
thinking was at all necessary. On the contrary, it was 
manifest that, in order to make a great part of the 
Bible available for the direct teaching of the few sub- 
jects to which they confined themselves, it was needful 
to violate all rules of sober criticism, and confound the 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OP CIIEISTIANITY. gg 

Old Testament with the 'New by an arbitrary spiritual- 
ising interpretation to which reason could set no limits. 
The practical result of such a course was an extensive, 
though vague, popular impression that the test of a cor- 
rect exposition of Scripture was the amount of comfort 
or edification that the hearer or reader sensibly derived 
from it. The pious feelings which a text, as he under- 
stood it, produced in his mind were unhesitatingly re- 
garded as the consequence of the Spirit's teaching 
through the Word. Human agency, it was indeed 
acknowledged, was necessary to teach a man to read ; 
and human agency was needful to supply the unlearned 
with translations of the Bible ; but, beyond this, very 
little was allowed to any other help than prayer, for 
the profitable study of the Scripture. 

The real tendency, it is evident, of such opinions is 
not to exalt the authority of the Word of God, but to 
destroy it. The mind of the reader in such a process 
of study, instead of receiving instruction from the Scrip- 
ture, imports a meaning into it. We have, not an Mce- 
gesis, but an Isegesis. A certain system of doctrine is 
first accepted, not upon the authority of propound ers 
accredited by external evidence, but for the sake of the 
doctrine itself: the Scripture becomes valuable only as 
the vehicle of this doctrine, and valuable in proportion 
as it can be made the vehicle of this doctrine, and the 
means of exciting a certain class of pious sentiments : 
and, as it is soon discovered that what the very ele- 
ments of criticism would detect as palpable misinter- 
pretations or mistranslations of the sacred text may be 
the most cherished vehicles of such doctrine, and pow- 
erful exciters of such feelings, criticism is laid aside, 
and the Bible becomes a kind of cipher, to be read not 
by reason but by fancy. 

10. I am tracing here the ultimate development of 
false principles when left unchecked to their full oper- 
ation. But, even in cases where no such extravagance 
was possible, we can perceive through a great part of 
the religious writings of the last generation a prevailing 
tendency to forget the aspect of Fact^ and view only 



Yo ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay II. 

the aspect of Doctrine in contemplating the truths of 
Christianity. Indeed, if we steadily retain in our minds 
the historical view of Christianity which is presented 
in the JSTew Testament, and the primitive creeds, as a 
religion of Facts, it will be hard to grasp Mr. Cole- 
ridge's dictum as even a comprehensible utterance. It 
will immediately strike us as hardly intelligible to 
say, that the best way to convince a man that Jesus 
Christ was " conceived by the Holy Ghost ; born of the 
Yirgin Mary ; suffered under Pontius Pilate ; was cru- 
cified, dead, and buried ; and the third day rose again 
from the dead ; " is to make him sensible of a strong 
wish that these facts should have taken place. It would 
at once become plain that the religion which was to be 
proved by such a process must be something widely 
different from an historical religion. 

11. "While such causes as I have endeavoured to in- 
dicate were in England loosing men's hold upon the 
historical element in Cln-istianity, other influences were 
operating at a greater distance towards the same result. 
The literature of Germany is eminently speculative and 
metaphysical. There the Governments have been ac- 
customed to forbid, as dangerous to the public peace, 
the free discussion of those concrete matters relating to 
Church and State on which the popular mind with us 
is kept continually interested, and often agitated. The 
only scope for the activity of the human intellect in 
dealing with morals, religion, and politics, is in those 
high generalities where vulgar minds are unable to 
follow it. Literary men converse with, and write for, 
literary men, and feel no necessity to translate their 
thoughts into the common working-day language of 
ordinary life. Within the esoteric circle, one dialect 
is spoken ; without it, another : and thus speculation is 
unchecked by that constant reference to the common 
sense of mankind which in freer countries curbs its ex- 
travagance. 

These two circumstances — the encouragement of un- 
limited speculation within bounds remote from vulgar 
apprehension, and the repression of everything directly 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ^1 

tending to agitate the mass of tlie people, or shake the 
institutions of the country — gave its peculiar character 
to German infidelity. The pr,oblem to be solved was, 
the substitution of metaphysical Pantheism for revealed 
religion, combined with a retaining of the structure and 
ordinances of the Church, together with the language 
of the Scripture and the Creeds, accommodated to the 
requirements of such metaphysics. The result has 
been truly described as a system which, " concealing 
scepticism under faith, using much circumlocution to 
reach its object, dwelling on the imagination, on poetry, 
on spirituality, transfigured what it threw into the 
shade, built up Avhat it destroyed, and affirmed in 
words what in eifect it denied." It was intended for a 
kind of Euthanasia of Christianity. Revelation was 
to die out, not amidst the insults of coarse assailants, 
but the compliments and tender regret of friends, and 
to leave behind it an honoured name and a conspicuous 
monument. God was to be merged in the Soul of the 
Universe : Christ in the Ideal of Humanity : the Incar- 
nation in the union of the higher and lower principles 
of human nature ; and the Atonement in the reconcilia- 
tion of those principles through struggle and suffering. 
For the successful carrying out of such an enterprise, 
it was necessary to expel the- miraculous from the docu- 
ments of Christianity, without charging the authors of 
them with fraud or deliberate imposture : and this was 
attempted in two ways. The earlier project was to 
resolve the supposed miracles into a series of odd nat- 
ural events, sometimes mistaken for supernatural by 
the excited fancies of the spectators. The later method 
proposed to turn almost the whole narrative, natural 
and supernatural, into a set of symbolical legends, 
embodying the idea of the Jewish Messiah as modified 
by the necessity of adapting it to Jesus of Nazareth. 
Each of these — the naturalistic and the mythical theory 
— promised well at first ; but each was soon found to 
labour under insuperable difficulties. Common sense 
revolted at last, even in the studies of German profes- 
sors, against the clumsily elaborate explanations by 



72 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 

wliicii miracles vreve converted into natural events. 
A fresh hypothesis had to be made for each occnrrence, 
and it was at last perceived that such a multitude of 
strange natural phenomena, crowded into the narrative 
of a few Tears, and gratuitouslv assumed for the mere 
purpose of evading the obvious meaning of the story, 
were really far more improbable than miracles them- 
selves. On the other hand, the external evidence car- 
ried back the date of the sacred writings to an age 
when the true history of Jesus was so recent as to make 
it incredible that it should have been wholly smothered 
then by legends of a mere romantic character ; * while 
the gravity, consistency, and perfect quietness of the 
style of those writings themselves made the attempt to 
turn them into mythical legends a task everywhere 
difficult in detail, and, in some cases, even ludicrously 
hopeless. Hence, to account for the historical phenom- 
ena of Christianity is still really an unsolved problem 
among German unbelievers. The plain direct account 
— that Jesus was the Son of God ; that He died, and 
rose again ; and sent His Holy Spirit to plant His 
Church in the world — ^is set aside by an d j^'^'f^ori pre- 
sumption against all miracles. But the historical evi- 
dence, the Books themselves^ still remains a " stone of 
stumbling, and rock of offence," against which hypothe- 
sis after hypothesis is dashed to pieces. 

The irreligious principles which thus, for a long time, 
infected the critical and philosophic and theological 
literature of the Continent, made it odious in England ; 
and the policy at first acted on was to endeavour to ex- 
clude it altogether from the notice of the British pub- 
lic, f But such a policy was attended with greater 
evils than were likely to have ensued if things had 
been suffered to take their natural course. A great 
part, indeed, of the critical literature of Germany was 

* Strauss, for example, is compelled to acknowledge that Luke, the author 
of the third Gospel and the Acts, was the companion^and most probably the 
disciple, of St. Paul. 

+ See some curious details in the Appendix to G-oode's 'Life of Geddes.' 
The scandal occasioned by the translations of Schleiermacher, and even of 
Xeibuhr, are matters of recent memory. 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. fjQ 

valuable in no sense whatever. Much ot it was a 
mere succession of wild hjpotlieses,^^" springing up, like 
mushrooms, in the morning, and perishing at night, 
without leaving even a relic of their decay to manure 
the soil on Avhicli they had flourished. Much of it was 
the mere lost labour of a perverse diligence, and sinister 
ingenuity, like the fairy toil of the Gnomes and Kobolds 
in the fables of its own mines and forests. But so vast 
an amount of intense mental activity and unlimited 
research into all the recesses of learning, sacred and 
profane, — so free a questioning of everything ; so vari- 
ous a combination of new ideas upon such a multitude 
of subjects, — could not but contain in it seeds of thought 
that might have usefully stimulated the natural indo- 
lence of our intellect at home. The mere love of Truth 
for its own sake is, in general, not sufficient to set men 
on work, and keep them at work. It is, to a great 
extent, the collision of thought, the pressure of difficul- 
ties, the agitation of doubts, that, by " troubling the 
waters," makes them yield their virtue. The culture 
of the mind is like the tillage of the soil — 

" Pater ipse colendi 
Haud facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per artes 
Movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda, 
ITec torpere gravi passus sua regna veterno." 

As it was, English scholarship seemed to have settled 
upon its lees ; and we have scarcely ever had an age 
so barren of any great efforts as that of which we are 
now speaking.f 

* " It is well known," says De Wette in the Preface to his ' Lehrbuch der 

historisch-kritischen Einleitung,' " that from the beginning the pernicious 

fondness for vain and arbitrary combinations and hypotheses has been 

brought into this department The burden of hypotheses under 

which Biblical introduction labours has been much increased in recent 
times." He takes credit for bringing iach the history of the Septuagint ver- 
sion to the place in which ITod^ left it in 1704. 

t I have purposely avoided any details of the reactioh towards Church 
authority called the Tract Movement. It is certain that, so far from doing 
anything to revive the study of Christian evidences, some of the foremost 
leaders of that movement went even beyond the most violent ultra-Protes- 
tants in denouncing that study as dangerous ; and ultimately encouraged 
men to " throw themselves " into a particular system, on the ground mainly 
of its affording scope to certain religious feelings, and gratifying certain 
religious tastes. This branch of the suWect has been considered in the ' Oau- 
tions/or the Times/ (Parker and Son, London.) 
4 



74 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay It 

12. But meanwliile men of leisure and curiosity, in 
the universities and elsewhere, disgusted with the tame 
and superficial monotony that prevailed around them, 
were repairing, as it were, in secret, to the fresh stores 
that had been opened on the continent of Europe. The 
very circumstance that this foreign literature was se- 
cluded from the vulgar gaze, and even a kind of contra- 
band learning, gave it an additional charm. The adepts 
felt as if they had been initiated in some higher myste- 
ries, and were disposed hughly to over-estimate the 
value of their attainments. Doubts and strange opin- 
ions which, if they had been freely expressed and ven- 
tilated in the fresh air and broad sunshine of public 
discussion, would have soon shrunk to their proper 
small dimensions, grew into giants in the shade, and 
over-mastered the minds that had been nursing them in 
secret. Then, gradually, the influence of the new opin- 
ions began to pervade the current literature of the 
country — not in plain and definite statements — that 
would have too rudely shocked the multitude, but 
sometimes in hints " vocal to the intelligent," sometimes 
in ambiguous language adapting to other purposes the 
religious phrases of the day, sometimes under a cloud 
of metaphysical jargon that bewildered the admiiing 
reader. Thus it has come to pass that, without any 
open controversy, but silently, as it were, and " while 
men slept," the old matter-of-fact faith has died out in 
many minds, and religion has come to be regarded as 
an affair of sentiment, that should be disentangled, as 
soon as possible, from its historical elements. 

13. It would not, I think, be very difficult to meet 
the patrons of such views, even on their own high phil- 
osophical ground. I think it would not be hard to 
prove that, even if we took the moral wants of man as 
the sole measure of religious truth, the Grospel which 
these persons preach is inadequate to meet the moral 
wants of man. We require not merely an ideal of hu- 
man excellence, but to see that ideal realized ; and to 
see fui'ther that the issue of that realization has been 
a triumph over all the ills of life, and over all the men- 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ^5 

aces of death. "We require to be sliown, in fact^ that 
man can truly serve God, and that the end oi that ser- 
vice is everlasting life. We need a basis of fact, an 
historical basis, for our religious faith ; and without 
such a basis that faith is a mere castle in the air — a 
splendid vision, as practically inoperative to resist real 
temptation as every other ideal picture has ever proved. 

But, after all, this would be only " answering a fool 
according to his folly ; " and it is better to begin by 
protesting at once against the foundation of the whole 
theory. It is a mere delusion to fancy that man's sup- 
posed wants or his wishes are to be taken as either the 
major or the minor limits, or, indeed, as any measure 
at all, of religious truth. We cannot be justified in as- 
suming that things exist because we seem to ourselves 
to want, or because we feel that we earnestly desire 
their existence ; nor can we even be justified in disbe- 
lieving or disregarding the existence of things which 
seem to us superfluous, or unpleasant, or even noxious, 
if assured on good authority that they exist, and that it 
is important for us to take notice of their existence. 

That man must, indeed, be a backward scholar in 
the school of nature who has not learned, even from his 
own experience, how little human wants and wishes are 
an evidence that the things wanted and wished for really 
exist. It is the common delusion of over-sanguine 
youth to fancy that we shall find in life exactly what 
we seem to require, and that circumstances will infal- 
libly open for us those opportunities which are most 
suitable for the display of our talents, and the advance- 
ment of our fortunes. But how little does stern reality 
tally with these golden dreams of the inexperienced 
imagination ! And shall we go on to the grave, trust- 
ing these promises of our own fancy, which every day 
is, with continually accumulated evidence, proving to 
be false ? 

It is not, if we are wise, to our wants and wishes 
that we trust, in the affairs of this world, as evidence 
that the means of remedying those wants, or gratifying 
those wishes, are in store for us ; but to the proper evi- 



76 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IL 

dence of matters of fact. And if we wonld find a solid 
basis for our religious faith, we must obtain for it also a 
similar foundation. 

The truth is that we may see beforehand that the 
wants and wishes of a creature like man are boundless, 
and, in their very nature, incapable of being all grati- 
fied. All creatures are necessarily imperfect ; and 
every imperfection is the want of some conceivable 
good ; and every conceivable good is in itself desirctble / 
and may, if we give the reins to our desire, become an 
object of our wishes. 

" Men would be angels, angels would be gods." 

ITothing short of absolute, of infinite perfection can 
possibly supply all wants, and gratify all the wishes 
of an imperfect being, who fancies that he has only to 
wish strongly in order to obtain his object. 

And equally vain is the notion that we may safely 
disregard everything that seems not suitable to our 
moral nature. Here, again, let us have recourse to that 
analogy which the great master of that argument has 
justly described as " the very guide of life." How ill 
would a child reason who should obstinately neglect 
every study, the use of which he could not himself dis- 
cern ! And, as to the things of another life, are we not 
all children ? Shall we, who know not what an hour 
may bring forth, — we, whose wisest calculations and 
most sagacious foresight are perpetually baffled and 
brought to nothing in a moment by the changes and 
chances of even this short mortal life — shall we presume 
to take our own case for eternity into our own hands, 
and determine for ourselves what is sufficient for us to 
believe ? The Almighty has taken us under His own 
care. He has promised us an inheritance of which we 
know little more than that it is a state of eternal holi- 
ness and happiness. He has engaged to prepare us for 
it here, and, for that purpose, has revealed to us those 
truths which He saw fitting for our discipline. Can 
we know so certainly how the character which He re- 
quires is to be formed, as to be able to correct the 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHEI8TIANITT. Y7 

method which. He has been pleased to employ ? Do we 
know our spiritual diseases so well that we can safely 
reject the remedies which the Great Physician has pre- 
scribed for them ? Are we, in this our state of infancy, 
so perfectly acquainted with all that is needful for our 
manhood that we can manage our own education, and 
determine the training by w^hich we are to be reared for 
Heaven ? If, indeed, the present life were the whole 
of each man's existence, if our only immortality were 
the immortality of the human race, there might be 
some specious ground for saying that we had now made 
such a survey of all our narrow domain, and gained 
such a knowledge of our capacities and implements, 
that we were at last entitled to be our own masters, and 
might trust to our own little skill and prudence in the 
management of our own little territory. But if a 
boundless and untried existence, beyond the limits of 
all our experience, really does lie before each individual 
hereafter, it is surely mere madness to neglect, in mat- 
ters which concern that existence, the teachings of Him 
who alone knows the nature of that hidden world into 
which we are so blindly passing. 

A prudent man, then, will not only inquire what it 
is that his heart seems to want, but also how far those 
wants are, in point of fact, supplied. He will not only 
consider what he wishes to be true, but what he has 
reasonable evidence for believing to be true. He will 
treat the truths of Religion as matters of fact, and seek 
for the appropriate evidence of matters of fact — that is, 
in other words, for historical evidence. 

14. A religion disentangled entirely from all histor- 
ical inquiries, and commending itself immediately to 
the mind by its mere intrinsic beauty and suitability to 
man's wants and wishes, may be a very captivating 
vision, and seems highly desirable on many accounts ; 
but it is a gross abuse of words to call such a religion 
Christianity. Christianity is the religion which was 
taught by Christ and his Apostles ; and it was certainly 
an historical religion — a religion made up of matters 
of fact, and propounded on the evidence of matters of 



^JQ ■ AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 

fact— wMcli they promulgated. " That which we have 
heard and seen with our eyes, and our hands have han- 
dled of the "Word of Life, declare we nnto yon," is the 
language of the first preachers of the Gospel ; and the 
modern attempt to separate the ideal Christ, the type 
of the godlike in man, from the historical person, is not 
a whit less opposed to the genius of the Apostolic re- 
ligion than was that teaching of the Gnostics against 
which the last of the Apostles raised his warning voice 
as the very spirit of Antichrist. The Christ of the 
Gnostics was an impalpable ^on ; the Christ of their 
successors is something less substantial — an abstract 
idea. 

Indeed, whatever may be the case with other re- 
ligions; the Gospel certainly never made its way by 
first recommending itself to the conscious wants and 
wishes of mankind. It seemed, on the contrary, to 
contradict all man's expectations, and to outrage all 
their cherished feelings, and to cross all their desires. 
It was " to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the 
Greeks foolishness." It is not until believed and 
acted upon that it gradually changes the temper and 
frame of mind into accordance with itself; it is like 
some of those tonic medicines which, at first, seem bit- 
ter and disagreeable, until the palate is accustomed to 
their taste, and the stomach braced and strengthened 
by their wholesome harshness. 

It may, indeed, on the surface, seem strange that 
the Christian religion should be thus encumbered, as it 
were, by an apparatus of history ; and that men should 
be required to investigate the evidence of past transac- 
tions in order to find a basis for their Faith, instead of 
merely consulting their hearts, and finding an echo 
there, to attest the divinity of its voice. But in this, as 
in other cases, we shall find, upon reflection, that what 
seems the foolishness of God, is wiser than men. The 
careful and candid investigation of the evidences on 
which Christianity rests — not for the satisfying a mere 
inquisitive curiosity, but to find truth for the regulation 
of our lives— is an eminently practical exercise of the 



Essay IL] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. ^9 

understanding, and brings home the great facts of our 
religion as facts to the mind, with a feeling of their 
reality which the most highly raised efforts of the imag- 
ination cannot give them ; and thus makes rational 
deliberate faith a counterpoise to the engrossing influ- 
ence of sense. In the affairs of the world, we know 
that realities address themselves, in some shape or 
other, to the judgment ; and that those that exclusively 
and immediately address the feelings and the imagina- 
tion are unreal. If, then, the objects of religion en- 
tered only through this ivory gate of fancy into tlie 
mind, a steady practical faith in their reality could be 
hardly maintained. I say a steady practical faith ; for, 
undoubtedly, if religion were a mere affair of feeling 
divorced from practice, or of practice divorced from 
motive, and reduced to the mere mechanism of custom, 
there might be something intelligible in discarding all 
investigation of evidence. Every one, even superficially 
acquainted with the structure of the human mind, is 
aware that the feelings may, as in the case of a novel 
or a play, be deeply interested and strongly excited, 
without anything but, at best, a sort of dim and tran- 
sient belief in the reality of the objects which thus in- 
terest and excite them ; and that, for such a purpose, 
scarcely anything more is necessary than that the mind 
should not, for the time, attend to their unreality. This 
suffices for mere feeling : but for" action, a perfectly 
sane man requires more. He requires evidence as a 
ground of belief : and, even in an insane man, — where 
the fancy has become paramount, and established its 
throne upon the ruins of the understanding, close ob- 
servers can generally detect a lurking suspicion of the 
deceitfulness of the mind's own visions, — an unsteady 
wavering flicker in the predominating persuasion, which 
betrays a difference of no small importance between 
rational and irrational belief ; a secret sense of insecu- 
rity and weakness, which makes the mind of the mad- 
man, except in some high paroxysm of frenzy, succumb 
and quail before the calmer presence of a well-regulat- 
ed intellect. 



80 ^II>S TO FAITH, [Essay II. 

15. There is anotlier use also served bj this compli- 
cation of religion with historical inquiry, which it is 
not unsuitable to notice. The essential connection of 
Christianitj with the history of past ages makes a pro- 
vision for the maintenance and advancement of civiliza- 
tion in every country in which Christianity prevails. 
It was this which made the preservation of learning 
possible when the great flood of barbarism swept over 
Europe, and the Church alone contained the sacred de- 
posit of an earlier civilization — the memory of the past, 
and the hopes of the future. And it is this which is 
still a bulwark against barbarism. Barbarism is essen- 
tially that state of mind which is produced by placing 
it exclusively under the influences of a contracted 2y'"es- 
ent sphere of cu'cumstances. It is, as Dr. Johnson just- 
ly said, " by making the past, the distant, and the fu- 
ture predominate over the present," that we are " ad- 
vanced in the dignity of thinking beings." All history, 
more or less, renders this valuable service to the human 
mind ; but it cannot be reasonably doubted that the 
history of the Church, in that view of it which the Bible 
presents, as one continuous body from the beginning of 
the world, is, of all others, the best fitted to render such 
a service. The idea of history, it has been truly said,* 
is that of the biography of a society. There must be, 
to constitute the narrative properly historical, an unity 
of action, interest, and purpose among the persons who 
are the subjects of it. Kow, whether we consider the 
length of its duration, or the breadth of its extent, — the 
variety of its fortunes, or the unity of its purpose, — the 
diversity of its members in age, and character, and lan- 
guage, and manners, and habits of thought, and stages 
of cultivation, or the closeness of mutual relation into 
which all these seemingly scattered persons have been 
brought, — what other society can anywhere be pointed 
out which can form so noble and so useful a subject for 
the historian? It is the conception of the Church 
which enables the mind not only to combine, but to 
blend together, the pastoral simplicity of the primitive 

* Arnold's Lectures on History. 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF GHEISTIANITT. gj 

times of mankind and the elaborate civilization of later 
ages ; — to bring into one collection all the characteris- 
tics of all the climes and regions of the world ; — to 
bring all specimens of the human family, " from the 
north and from the south, and from the east and from 
the west," and make them " sit down " before ns " in 
the kingdom of God." ]^or can I doubt that the pecu- 
liar strength, and freedom, and versatility of the mod- 
ern European intellect are, to a great extent, due to the 
historical character of Christianity. 'No one can read, 
intelligently, so much as the prime documents of our 
faith, even in a vernacular translation, without feeling 
himself transported into a region where the modes of 
conception and of expression^ the events and the insti- 
tutions to be met with, are strikingly different from 
those which surround him with the associations of ev- 
eryday life ; without, in short, finding himself, for the 
time, emancipated from the mere influence of the pres- 
ent, and brought under that of the distant and the past. 
!N"or could anything have secured such a potent and 
salutary influence to history over the human mind as 
the indissoluble tie by which it is connected with relig- 
ion ; the feeling that, in our nearest and most intimate 
relations, we are personally connected, as members of 
one body, with the remotest past and the illimitable 
future, — linked in one unbroken living chain, with patri- 
archs and prophets, and apostles and martyrs, — heirs 
with them of the same promise, and waiting with them 
for the same completion of the great mystery of God. 
And it is worth observing that Providence has so ar- 
ranged matters, that the Eastern world — to which the 
language and habits of thought contained in Scripture 
were most familiar, — seems destined to receive back its 
lessons, modified by the peculiarities of Western civili- 
zation and European teaching. In those nations where 
the language of Christianity was, as it were, a native 
voice, it produced least influence at first as a source of 
permanent civilization. It was the leaven oi foreign 
associations which caused a fermentation in the West- 
ern mind : and, from the blended mass which was the 
4* 



82 ^II>S TO FAITH. [Essay IL 

product of that fermentation, it seems destined to pass 
back to the realms from which it came, in a form fitted 
to produce there a similar effect. 

In the same degree, then, as any system has a 
tendency to break the connexion between history and 
religion, in that same degree it tends to deprive civili- 
zation itself of one of its chief safeguards, — to with- 
draw from effective operation one of the most power- 
ful causes which now stimulate research and bring the 
minds of the present generation into contact with those 
of the past. If the mind be referred immediately, for 
religious guidance, not to an historical document, but 
to a supposed infallible authority of the present 
Church, or to the supposed infallible authority of each 
man's fancy and feelings, the influences favourable to 
barbarism are so far restored : and I think the visible 
results of both experiments, so far as either has been con- 
sistently worked out, are such as to show that a retrogres- 
sion towards barbarism would be their most probable con- 
sequence. To look only at the present — to live in the 
present — shape our habits by the present — adopt, at 
every change, the vogue of the day — and cast aside 
whatever we cannot accommodate to the taste of our 
own generation — this is to do our utmost to restore 
barbarity, and sink us below the level on which God 
and nature intended us to bo placed. And hence we 
may find fresh reason for admiring the wisdom of the 
Divine economy which, in the case of the Jewish and 
of the Christian Church alike, withdrew, after a while, 
the living voice of inspired guides, and substituted for 
them, as the ultimate basis of faith, a written historical 
record of their teaching ; thus building the Church, as 
a continuous body through all ages, on that foundation 
of the apostles and prophets, of which Jesus Christ 
Himself is the chief corner-stone. 

16. But then it will be said, — " Is not Christianity a 
Gospel to be preached to the poor? and how are tlie 
mean and illiterate to judge of the historical evidences 
of Christianity ? " 

Now, undoubtedly, not in religious matters alone, 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 33 

but in respect of almost every useful truth alike — 
moral, scientific, economical, political — the uneducated 
and ill-educated classes labour under peculiar disad- 
vantages ; and this, so far as it is a difficulty, is a 
difficulty upon every hypothesis which admits a 
benevolent Providence and recognises a difference 
between truth and falsehood.* The true lesson to be 
derived from the circumstance is, that we are bound, 
as far as we can, to raise the condition of our meaner 
brethren, and make them more and more capable of 
judging for themselves. Still, however, no doubt, 
great difference will continue to subsist : nor will it 
ever be possible to equalize all understandings, or 
make the opportunities and capacities of improvement 
the same for every mind. But each class must be 
contented, in this as in other cases, with such an 
amount of evidence as its circumstances will allow ; 
and, if the upper classes would faithfully do their 
duty, this amount of evidence would not be small in 
any case. 

Let it be observed that the form of this objection 
allows us to assume that Christianity is true ; that it is 
capable of being proved true by rational evidence to 
well-informed persons ; that, among men of literary 
attainments, it can hold its ground with the weapons of 
argument ; that it needs not to fear any amount of 
light, or shrink from any examination however search- 
ing ; and, assuming this, let us consider what the con- 
dition of the lower classes would have been, if the 
Church had faithfully done its duty. The Christian 
religion would then come before them as a religion 
manifestly subserving no interested temporal ends — 
encumbered with no artifices of priestcraft— notorious- 
ly based, from the first, upon the ground of rational 
evidence, and maintaining itself through all genera- 
tions upon that ground alone, — open to all challengers, 
and ready at all times to give a reason of its hope to 

* The difficulties attending the rejection of these being all the marks of 
design and benevolent intention in the structure of nature and the course of 
history. 



g4 AIDS TO FAITH. ^ [Essay 11. 

every one demanding it ; — and can it be said that this 
would not be good evidence to them of its truth ; and 
evidence of the same kind as that upon which they 
must rely, from their circumstances, for the truth of 
almost everything of importance at all removed beyond 
the sphere of their own immediate experience ? * It 
is the putting of Christianity upon other grounds ; it is 
the claim of authority to silence doubt ; it is the dis- 
couragement of inquiry, the contempt of reason, the 
depreciation of intellect in religious matters ; it is the 
shrinking from light and correction, the suffering pure 
truth to be encrusted with prejudices and mistakes for 
fear of unsettling men's minds ; it is the borrowing of 
the arts and language that are the common signs of 
imposture by the friends of truth, and leaving its own 
bold speech and open ways to its enemies ; it is these 
unworthy methods that deprive the lower classes of the 
safeguards which, with such a religion, they might and 
ought to have for the security of their faith. The 
Providence of God has linked all classes together in 
mutual dependence, so that, " if one member suffer, all 
the members suffer with it ;" and the Gospel cannot be 
preached to the poor, if the well-instructed scribes do 
not take the only measures by which it can possibly be 
preached with effect. 

17. But, even of direct evidence, the amount is not 
slight that is within the reach of the humbler classes. 
There is much of most persuasive evidence of the truth 
of Christianity which not only requires no dialectical 
skill to make it felt, but which cannot be drawn out 
and stated in its full force by any amount of dialectical 
skill. Let any one consider with himself what the 
nature of the evidence is npon which he has formed 
his judgment of the characters of the persons with 
whom he converses in daily life. What a medley 
of slight traits, looks, gestures, chance expressions, 
little circumstances, each, perhaps, ambiguous in itself, 

* See an interesting statement of the nature of the evidence within the 
reach of the lower orders, in Archbishop Whately's 'Easy Lessons' on the 
Evidences, pp. 23-27. 



EssATlL] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 85 

but all conspiring in one definite impression, will it 
appear ! And all these he has gathered in and com- 
bined, not by a consciously logical process, watching 
for and sifting each scruple of evidence as it arose, and 
then deliberately putting them together, like a clever 
advocate to make a case ; but unconsciously, and by a 
kind of instinct, the mind has drawn its inference from 
these little circumstances which he can remember, and 
from a thousand other evanescent phenomena which he 
cannot now recall. And yet all this evidence was 
good evidence, upon which he unhesitatingly relies. 

Now such is the reasonable evidence which the 
Scriptures themselves yield to the candid and attentive 
reader, who is neither searching for proof nor watch- 
ing for objections. It deposits, as it were, the practi- 
cal persuasion of its own truthfulness and honesty by 
a thousand artless traits while we converse with its 
pages. "If w^e may judge," says Jackson, "of the 
truth of men's writings by their outward form or 
character, as we do of men's honesty by their looks, 
speech, or behaviour, what history in the world bears 
so perfect a resemblance to things done and acted, or 
yields (without further testimony than its own) so full 
assurance of a true narration?" [Works, vol. i. p. 27.] 
Men who never consciously framed a syllogism have 
felt, and are daily feeling, the force of such evidence. 
They are continually perusing the accounts of miracles 
so numerous and so striking that the witnesses of them 
could not be mistaken, and yet imbedded indissolubly * 
in a narrative so artless, so grave, so honest, so intelli- 
gent, as palpably to be no product of fraud or fancy ; 
and, without any elaborate criticism or detailed pro- 
cess of deduction, their mind takes the impression 
which a book so circumstanced is naturally and rea- 
sonably fitted to impart. Thus many a mind that has 
scarcely ever felt a doubt, or heard of an infidel in 

* " The miracles in the Bible," says Bolingbroke, " are not, like those in 
Livy, detached pieces that do not disturb the civil history, which goes on very 
well without them. . . . But the whole history is founded on them ; it 
consists of little else ; and if it were not a history of them, it would be a his- 
tory of nothing." 



86 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essat IL 

Christian lands, has, in reality, based its faith upon 
rational evidence. Its belief has not been built 
amidst the noise of hammers and the ring of axes, but 
has grown up, " a noiseless structure," from the ground 
of an honest and true heart. 

18. In some respects, indeed, the result of the un- 
limited development of critical inquiry abroad has 
been to diminish, rather than increase the difficulties 
of comparatively unlearned readers. Almost the only 
infidel theory which is quite intelligible to the lower 
orders, is that coarse one which treats the !N"ew Testa- 
ment as a mere forgery throughout, or ascribes the origin 
of our religion to gross fraud and imposture. Now, if 
there be any certain result of German criticism at all, 
it has been to show that any such theory is utterly un- 
tenable. The "Wolfenbiittel Fragments were almost the 
last shameful effort in that direction, and their track is 
a road which no one, with the smallest pretensions to 
literary character, would now venture to pursue. Count- 
less other evasions of the plain force of evidence, each 
contradictory of the other, and each rejected with con- 
tempt by almost every one but its author, have been 
invented ; but there is, except at Tiibingen, no disposi- 
tion to return to what may be called the old orthodox 
system of infidelity. To men of plain common sense, 
if they fully understood the whole state of the case, it 
would appear that all the premisses are granted which 
render inevitable an admission of the substantial truth 
of Christianity. Put, for example, Paul's undoubted 
Epistles, with Luke's Gospel and Acts, into the hands 
of a plain ordinary Englishman, and tell him, " It is 
no longer questioned that these letters are the genuine 
work of Paul; it is no longer questioned that the 
writer of the other Books was his companion, who com- 
piled them while the men were still alive, who had 
conversed with Jesus, and seen him crucified ; it is no 
longer doubted that Paul and Luke were sincere and 
honest men who had no design to impose upon their 
hearers ; and the alternatives before you are either to 
admit that Christianity was really grounded upon 



Essay IL] EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY. 3^ 

miracles, or to explain these documents by the 
methods of Paulus, or Strauss, or Weisse, or some 
other Naturalistic or Mythic Doctor ;" — let this, I say, 
be the issue placed before an Englishman of ordinary 
common sense and information, and there can be little 
doubt that he would regard the first alternative as far 
less prodigiously incredible than the second. The case 
stands thus : 

19. The origin of the Christian religion is not one 
of those events so distant as to be lost in a fabulous 
antiquity. Whatever gave rise to it occurred at a period 
of which we know a great deal, in a civilized world, 
and within historic times; and was something which 
enabled the first preachers to make more converts among 
enemies in five years, than our most active missionaries 
have made in five centuries. Within no long time after 
the death of Jesus we find Christian Churches difi'used 
in the most distant places over this civilized world, 
continually growing in numbers and importance, under 
the eyes and in spite of the hostility of their powerful 
neighbours. The consentient tradition of all these 
Churches ascribes their foundation to the first Disciples 
of Jesus Christ, and ascribes to those Disciples the 
Gospel that He had been raised from the dead, and 
that this Resurrection, with its preceding and accom- 
panying miracles, was the ground of their faith. Their 
creeds, their sacraments, their universal observance of 
Easter and the weekly Lord's day, all embody this tradi- 
tion. These Churches are not without written historical 
records."^ They put forward, with one consent, a body 
of documents, giving a detailed account of Christ's life, 
and death, and resurrection, and of the first preaching 
and fortunes of his Apostles, and embracing a collection 
of letters from some of those Apostles themselves. 
With respect to many of these writings, no literary 

* " It is allowed," says Mr. Westcott, " by those who have reduced the 
genuine Apostolic works to the narrowest limits, that from the time of 
Irenaeus \i. e. the latter part of the second century] the New Testament was 
composed essentially of the same books as we receive at present, and that 
they were regarded with the same reverence as is now shown to them." — 
of tJie Canon, p. 8. 



88 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IL 

man of any character, at present, doubts their genuine- 
ness With respect to most of the rest, it is at any rate 
agreed that they are not mere forgeries of a late age, 
but books written in good faith, at a date when the true 
history of tlie times they refer to was easily to be ob- 
tained. The testimony of these documents is the same 
as the tradition of the Churches. They put the Christian 
religion npon the evidence of miraculous facts, and 
specially of Christ's Resurrection, as attested by the 
alleged witnesses of it, in the very place where He had 
been executed as a malefactor, and in the face of the 
very persons by whom He had been condemned and 
slain. 

What we are called upon to believe is — that all the 
Churches were mistaken as to the grounds of their own 
faith ; that all the documents, and the Apostles them- 
selves, have given a wrong account of it; that the 
belief in the religion was not grounded on the belief in 
the miracles, but that tlie belief in the miracles was 
grounded on the belief in the religion ; that Jesus, who 
(if He wrought no miracles and was the subject of no 
miracles) contradicted, in every circumstance of his 
birth, and education, and teaching, and life, and death, 
the best established and most cherished notions of all 
around Him concerning the promised JMessiah, was be- 
lieved, in spite of all, to be that Messiah ; that miracles 
were ascribed to Him because the Messiah ought to 
have wrought miracles ; that He was believed to have 
risen again because it suddenly occurred to somebody 
that He ought to have risen again ; and that, by such 
an easy and intelligible process as this, a creed of fables 
was transmuted into a creed of facts, and stamped in- 
delibly, and with one impression, upon the faith and 
institutions of the great Christian communities through- 
out the world. 

This is, in plain words, the theory ot the origin of 
Christianity corrected to the latest results of Continental 
criticism ; and it seems to amount to this — that Chkis- 

TIANITT HAD NO ORIGIN AT ALL. It is, iudccd, UOt cHticism 

that has spontaneously yielded these results ; but it is 



EesAXlL] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. gg 

the d priori prejudice against miracles which has forced 
criticism upon this strange enterprise. 

20. Let any one take up (it is almost forgotten now 
in Germany, but may be still met with in England) 
Dr. Strauss's ' Life of Jesus,' and he will see at once 
that the author is all through merely working out a 
foregone conclusion. J^ot one of his orthodox prede- 
cessors in the seventeenth century ever set himself with 
more dogged resolution to fight his way through all 
difficulties in defence of the verbal inspiration, scientific 
accuracy, and textual integrity of every jot and tittle in 
the Hebrew Scriptures, and find a way, or make one, 
to the goal which he had determined to reach, than 
Strauss does to destroy it. And so with his successors ; 
the very multitude and discordance of their theories is 
a witness to their insufficiency. They are the struggles 
of a strong animal in toils which he cannot break. The 
favourable posture for an infidel is that of an objector; 
when he is forced to recognise the necessity of having 
something positive on his own side, he finds his own 
difficulties greater than those over which he has been 
exulting in the case of his antagonists ; and the end 
has been that, in Germany, thinking men are either 
returning to the faith of their fathers, or laying the de- 
tailed examination of the phenomena of Christianity 
aside as an insoluble problem. And in reality, the 
greater part of the panic which has lately spread among 
us^ from the reappearance of the infidel controversy in 
England, has arisen from the security, the unhesitating 
acquiescence, of the previous generation. In the general 
silence of objectors, in the general recognition, which 
pervaded our whole literature, of the unquestionable 
truth of Christianity, men had ceased to reflect partic- 
ularly upon the rational grounds of their faith. Tlie 
authority of the Bible became a kind of axiom, and 
everything that was supposed to be involved in that 
authority was grasped with the same firmness of belief 
In such a state of mind, \h.Q whole of its creed is no 
firmer than the weakest part ; and hence, when open 
attacks began again to be made upon what men had 



90 AIDS TO PAITH. [Essay IL 

regarded from tlieir childhood as essential portions of 
Christianity — when attention was called to the real dif- 
ficulties which beset many passages, the undoubtedly 
strong objections which may be urged against many 
articles — when writers of learning and ability were 
quoted as authorities, not for, but against, the traditions 
of their youth — an alarm arose as if the whole of religion 
was giving way. This danger always attends the con- 
centration of a whole system of belief upon a single 
point. It is like embarking a whole army at once, for 
a long and perilous voyage, in one gigantic transport. 
If the ship hold together, much is gained in speed and 
convenience ; but if the vessel sink, all goes with her 
to the bottom. 

It is thus with the Romanist, who builds all on the 
authority of the present Church. If one portion, how- 
ever small or slight, of the complicated structure of his 
creed be shaken, the basis of it is shaken, and the entire 
edifice falls to ruin in a moment. And so, when the 
feelings of the reader have been made the test of the 
inspiration of Scripture ; — when men have been accus- 
tomed to say, '^W^feel^ from the echo in our bosoms, 
from the warm sentiments of devotion which it excites, 
from the sensible comfort that it gives, that this is and 
must be no less than the voice of God speaking with 
us;" — in such a case the decision of criticism against 
the genuineness or authenticity of a single book, or 
even of a single passage, becomes a thing formidable 
to the whole of faith. If the religious sense, on which 
the reader relies for distinguishing the divine from the 
human, have erred in any case, its assumed infallibility 
is gone ; the test itself of inspiration is shown to be fal- 
lacious ; and he is left doubtful whether the whole of 
his belief may not be founded on a mere delusion. 

But a faith founded upon rational evidence is not 
liable to be thus shaken. If it be shown, for example, 
that a particular verse in the 1st Epistle of John, or 
even a long passage in his Gospel, is an interpolation, 
this does not subvert the proof of the genuineness of 
the rest of those pieces ; since the evidence for the dis- 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CIIE13TIANITY. gj 

pnted parts, and the evidence for the rest of the docu- 
ments, is not the same; and such a faith is groimded 
npon and proportioned to the evidence. And if the 
evidences of Christianity, — their nature and degrees, — 
and even the first elements of the criticism of our sacred 
books, were made an ordinary part of the instruction 
of every tolerably educated man, we should be free 
from those periodical panics which are a disgrace to 
the intelligence of a Christian nation. 

As it is, when suddenly put upon searching the 
reasons of the faith that is in them, men hardly know 
at what point to begin, and in their confusion often 
seize first upon the weakest. 

21. In dealing, either for the satisfaction of our- 
selves or of others, with sceptical objections, it is of vast 
importance to consider in what order they are to be 
dealt with. If we suffer ourselves to fall into the error 
of regarding each part of our position as equally strong 
in itself, the consequences may prove calamitous. 

There are, for example, narratives of miraculous 
occurrences in the Bible, which, if we met with them 
separate from the rest, or connected with documents of 
a different character — if we found them in a life of 
Pythagoras or Apollonius — we should reasonably set 
aside as mere legendary stories, or exaggerations of 
purely natural events. It would be a grievous over- 
sight to stake the truth of Christianity at once upon the 
separate defence of such passages as these. The rea- 
sonable course is to waive them at the outset ; — to let 
them stand over for consideration in their due place ; — 
and to consider, first of all, the most important and 
best circumstanced facts upon which the claims of 
Revelation rest. If these can be established, the 
others will either be not worth fighting about, or will 
follow as a matter of course. " Supposing it acknowl- 
edged," says Bishop Butler, " that our Saviour spent 
some years in a course of working miracles ; there is 
no more presumption worth mentioning against Plis 
having exerted this miraculous power in a certain de- 
gree greater than in a certain degree less ; in one or 



92 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay 11. 

two more instances, than in one or two fewer ; in this, 
than in another manner." {Analogy^ part ii. c. 2.) 

It is quite true — and should always be distinctly 
allowed — that nervous excitement, the strong tonic of 
a powerful faith and a lively imagination — perhaps also 
some subtle influence, such as animal magnetism — are 
capable of producing wonderful cures of some disor- 
ders ; and that, if some of the narratives of miraculous 
cures in the Gospel and the Acts were all the miracu- 
lous narratives relating to the first planting of Chris- 
tianity that we had, it might be reasonable to suppose 
the cures effected by some such agencies as these. 
But if other miracles remain which are incapable of 
any such solution, and sufficient to prove the claims of 
Christianity to a divine origin, then the natural expla- 
nations, even of the former, cease to be the more prob- 
able ; because such natural effects as they assume, 
though possible, are more or less unlikely; whereas, 
there is no improbability in supposing that a person 
endowed with the power of miracles exerted it upon a 
particular occasion. It is improbable that any man 
ever lived in Greece of such strength as is attributed 
to Hercules ; but if it were once established that such 
a person lived at a given time, there would be nothing 
improbable in any story of a particular exertion of that 
strength, merely on account of its surpassing the vigour 
of ordinary mortals. 

Upon similar principles we should carefully avoid 
entangling the question of the general truth of Chris- 
tianity with that of the nature or extent of the inspira- 
tion of the sacred writers. There are, indeed, some 
arguments for Christianity which tend to prove directly 
the inspiration, in some form or other, of those writers ; 
as, for instance, that derived from the omission in their 
works of topics wdiich men in their circumstances 
would natuTcdly have introduced, an argument which 
has been pressed with great force by the Archbishop 
of Dublin in his first series of Essays.^ But, in gen- 
eral, it is evident that our first concern with the sacred 

* See also Bishop Hind's very valuable work on Inspiration. 



Essay II.] EVIDENCES OP CHRISTIANITY. 93 

writers is in their character of witnesses ; and we 
should carefully distinguish in our minds the objec- 
tions against their character as inspired persons, and 
objections against their character as trnstworthy rela- 
tors of facts. The question of the nature and extent of 
their inspiration legitimately comes in after the main 
facts have been established, which prove our Saviour's 
divine mission, and the promise of supernatural assist- 
ance which He made to His Apostles. 

Some parts, indeed, of Scripture, such as the proph- 
ecies, claim inspiration directly, and on the face of 
them ; and in the case of these, to disprove their in- 
spiration is to disprove their trustworthiness. 

But, meanwhile, in the interpretation of such writ- 
ings, it cannot be reasonable to put out of sight the 
character which they claim, and insist upon expound- 
ing them as if they were not inspired at all.* This is 
a principle of criticism which is never forgotten, ex- 
cept in the case of Scripture. If the Christian revela- 
tion be really the completion of the Jewish — if Christ 
and His Church be really the development of the mys- 
tery of God, which was gradually wrought and pre- 
pared for in all the previous dispensations — and if the 
prophets of those dispensations really " spoke as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost," it is no more unrea- 
sonable to give their lofty expressions a secondary ref- 
erence to the coming glory than to find allusions to 
Augustus in the '^neid,' or to Elizabeth and Mary in 
the ^ Faery Queen,' or to the Roman Republic in an 
ode to Horace's ship.f And, indeed, the very possi- 

* See * Charge of the Archbishop of Dublin,' 1861. Parker and Son, 
London. 

t See Hurd on the 'Prophecies,' and Warburton's 'Divine Legation,' b. 
vi. "In the case of prophecies with a double sense," I have observed else- 
where, " we may be often sure of the secondary application of some parts of 
them, even though we may see clearly that other parts have no such applica- 
tion Thus, for example, no one doubts that, in Spenser's Chronicle of 

Faery Kings (b. ii. c. x.), the following lines — 

He left two sonnes, of which fair Elferon, 

The eldest brother, did untimely die ; 

Whose e?npfie place the mighty Oberon 

Doubly supplied in spousall and dominion, 8fC. — 

He, dying, left the fairest Tanaquill 

Him to succeed therein, by his last will. 

Fairer and nobler liveth none this howre, 

N"e like in grace, ne like in learned skill, &c.— 



94 AIDS TO FAITH. pissAY IL 

bilitj of such an interpretation — the continuity of 
thought, character, and plan, in a literature spread 
over so many ages, which makes it feasible — has ever 
struck thoughtful men, from Justin Martyr to Pascal, 
as strong evidence for the inspiration of that literature. 
22. But to pursue these topics further would be 
only to repeat what has been a thousand times said 
already ; and when infidelity comes to drop its reserve, 
and tell us plainly what the deep objections are that 
are now only hinted at in more or less doubtful forms 
of insinuation, it will most probably be seen that there 
is very little new matter to be j)roduced in this great 
controversy, and that the Church is assailed in the 
nineteenth century with no stronger artillery than her 
walls have borne for eighteen centuries already. My 
earnest wish is, that those who think they can speak 
would speak out and let us know the worst. 

iv Se (f>deL koX oXeaaov. 
And if the literal truth of Christianity fall, it will cer- 
tainly be a final and total subversion of the whole 
religion. Let no one suppose that its spirit can remain 
living and acting among us after its body has been de- 
composed. Its spirit will return to God who gave it. 
"That man," says one who was no narrow bigot, "who 
does not hold Christ's earthly life, with all its mira- 
cles, to be as properly and really historical as any 
event in history, and who does not receive all points 
of the Apostolic creed with the fullest conviction, I do 
not conceive to be a Protestant Christian. And as for 
that Christianity which is such according to the fashion 
of the modern philosophers and pantheists, without a 
personal God, without immortality, without an individ- 
uality of man, without historical faith, it may be a 
very ingenious and subtle philosophy, but it is no 
Christianity at all."* 

No one, I say, doubts that these lines refer to Henry VIII. and Queen Eliza- 
beth, though there is no consistent parallel between the succession of Faery 
kings and British monarchs."— i\'oz;e to Butter's Analogy, p. 203. 

To argue from the extravagant abuse of types and double senses against 
their existence, is like arguing that if we admit figures of speech in any writ- 
ing, we cannot be sure that anything in it is literal. 

* Niebuhr, quoted by Neander in the Preface to the 3rd edition of his 
'Life of Christ.' 



ESSAT III 

PEOPHECY. 



COiTTENTS OF ESSAY IE. 



1. Inteodttction. 

2. The Divine Mission op the Proph- 

ets— Definition of the term " Proph- 
et." 
8. Definitionof the title "Seer." 

4. Definition of the designation "Man 

of God," 

5. Definition of the phrase " Man of the 

Spirit." 

6. Scripture contrast of the false prophet. 

7. The Power to predict the Fu- 

TTTRE— Popular belief of the He- 
brews. 

8. Claims of the Prophets themselves. 

9. Justification of their claims by the 

fulfilment of their predictions : Es- 
amples from Nahum — Hosea — Amos 
— Micah — Isaiah. 

10. Groundlessness of recent insinuations 

shown by the fulfilment of a re- 
markable prediction — Untrustwor- 
thiness of Kationalist criticism. 

11. Predictions of Moses concerning the 

destinies of Israel not disputed or 
explained by Eationalists or Essay- 
ists. 

12. Messianic Prophecy— The real ques- 



tion at issue: Whether the New 
Testament or German critics are to 
be our guides in interpreting proph- 
ecy? 

13. Yariety and diversity of opinions in 

the German Eationalist School un- 
bounded. 

14. Doctrine of our Lord and the Apos- 

tles. 

15. In citing or applying passages of the 

prophecies, attention must be paid 
to the mind and intention of the 
speaker or writer. 

16. Our Lord, and, after Him, the Apos- 

tles, lay down the principle that past 
history may represent that which is 
to happen hereafter. 

17. Prophecies which our Lord and the 

Apostles interpret as specially 
spoken in reference to Christ and 
Christianity— Belief of orthodox 
writers and Eationalist divines that 
Christ claimed to be the Messiah 
foretold by the Prophets. 

18. Genuineness of the Book of DanieL 

19. Genuineness of Isaiah xl.-xlvi. 

20. Interpretation of Isaiah liii. 

21. Conclusion. 



PROPHECY 



1. Hebrew prophecy, like tlie Hebrew people, 
stands without parallel in the history of the world. 
Other nations have had their oracles, diviners, augurs, 
soothsayers, necromancers. The Hebrews alone have 
possessed prophets, and a prophetic literature. It is 
useless, therefore, to go to the manticism of the heathen 
to get light as to the nature of Hebrew prophecy.'^ To 
follow the Rabbis of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
turies is just as vain. The only reliable sources of 
information on the subject are the Scriptures of the 
Old and 'New Testament. They contain documents 
written when the voice of prophecy still was heard, 
and it would be strange indeed to interpret coeval tes- 
timonies by theories devised by heathenized Rabbi s,f 
nearly two thousand years after Hebrew proj)liecy had 
ceased. Even a novice in the study of the Bible per- 
ceives the falsehood of the Rabbinic assertions, that the 
prophetic gift dwells only in a man who is learned, 
powerful, and rich ; and that no man can attain to it 
except by study, combined with a certain requisite 
mental conformation. :]: The attempt to explain pro- 
phetic inspiration by the phenomena of animal magnet- 
ism, seems to be still farther removed from sobriety of 

* Yitringa, Typus doctr. prophet., in ' Observationes Sacras,' lib, vii. p. 
4; Carpzov, ' Introd. ad Libr. Bibl. V. T.,' Part iii., p. 7 ; Knobel, 'Prophetis- 
mus der Hebraer,' i. 21 ; C. I. Nitsch, * System der Christlicheu Lelire,' p. 
88 ; Tholuck, * Die Propheten nnd ihre Weissagungen,' p. 1, 73. 

t Maimonides and his school, whom Smith and others follow, departed 
from the ancient tradition, and endeavoured to remodel Judaism according 
to the Greek philosophy with which they became acquainted through Arab 
translations. Maimonides himself is remarkable for his determined effort to 
eliminate the supernatural from the Old Testament, and may in truth be re- 
garded as the father of Rationalist Theology. 

X ' Doctor Perplexorum,' p. ii. c. 3. Buxtorf s Translation, p. 284 ; * Hil- 
choth Yesode Hattorah,' c. vii. ; Salvador, * Institutions de Moise,' i. p. 
192-197. 

5 



98 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IIL 

judgment, and Christian reverence.* From the Old 
Testament alone, illnstrated by the J^ew, is it possible 
to learn the nature of prophecy and the prophetic office. 
To interpret the prophetic writings with accuracy, a 
familiar acquaintance with the original language is 
necessary. But a correct idea of the prophet's work 
and office, and of the nature of prophecy in general, 
may be obtained from any ordinary translation of the 
Old Testament by any intelligent reader. The student 
of the English Bible may not be able to explain the 
meaning of a rare Hebrew word, or an obscure and 
doubtful passage, nor to perceive beauties and peculi- 
arities, observable only in the original. He must also 
occasionally miss the force of particular expressions, 
and sometimes put up with an incorrect rendering. 
But he can, without any Hebrew, understand the char- 
acter and history of Moses or Elijah, and know that 
Elijah foretold a drought, or Elisha a sudden plenty : 
that Micaiah was a true prophet, and the son of Che- 
naanah an impostor, just as easily and correctly as 
Gesenius, or Ewald, or Bunsen. 

For this no modern criticism is necessary, and in 
such matters no reader of the Authorized Version ought 
to allow himself to be mystified or silenced by an ap- 
peal to foreign critics, much less to be disturbed in his 
faith, as if he could not apprehend the general teaching 
of the Bible without profound knowledge of the Semitic 
dialects, and the latent results of German criticism. 
All these things are good in their place, but the great 
and essential outlines of Divine truth, whether in refer- 
ence to Deity, or piety, or morality, or prophecy, are 
perceptible without them ; and it would be just as 
reasonable to assert that without these things we can- 
not understand the Ten Commandments, as to tell the 

* " The word which we, after the LXX., translate PropMs, means in the 
Hebrew, Inspired. Their original designation was Seers, men who saw. 
Clairvoyance (the so-called magnetic sight) and prophesying in the ecstatic 
state were of remote antiquity amongst the Jews and their neighbours ; and 
Joseph, a man of a waking spirit, who, as a growing youth, possessed a 
natural gift of second sight, was able as man to see visions in his cup, just as 
the Arab boy in Cairo still sees them in bis bowl." — Baron Bunsen, Gott in 
der GescMcMe, p. 141. 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. 99 

reader of the Bible in the vernacular, that he cannot 
grasp the scope of prophecy, or know whether it has 
been fulfilled, until he has spent years in the study of 
Hebrew and of modern commentators. The essential 
features of prophetic truth are too boldly drawn to be 
hidden by the veil of translation, and have been as 
plain and visible in all ages to the Greek, the Syrian, 
and the Arab, as to the polyglot critic of the nine- 
teenth century. A knowledge of the Hebrew text, 
indeed, enables its possessor at once to reject such 
cavils as those lately revived,* that the Hebrew words 
in Ps. ii. 12 for " Kiss the Son," ought to be trans- 
lated " Worship purely," or that the Hebrew word for 
" pierce," in Ps. xxii. 17 ought to be rendered " Like 
a lion," or that in Isaiah ix. 6. (Heb. 5), the words 
" Mighty God " ought to be "A strong and mighty 
one." But the English reader still sees from the con- 
text, in spite of these alterations, that the 2nd Psalm 
speaks of an universal King, greater than David, that 
the 22nd Psalm portrays one persecuted to death by 
man, delivered by God, after whose deliverance " All 
the ends of the earth remember themselves and turn 
unto the Lord," and that in Isaiah ix., the prophet 
speaks of a marvellous child, who is also " The Ever- 
lasting Father, of the increase of whose government 
there shall be no end, to order and establish his king- 
dom forever ; " words amply sufficient to teach the 
reader that Isaiah spake of no mere man.f The He- 
brew student is astonished, in the present state of Bib- 
lical learning, to see such objections resuscitated. He 
knows that the translation " "Worship purely " was 
invented by Pabbinic controversialists j that the ver- 
sion '' Kiss the Son " is defended even by such an 
opponent of Christianity as Aben Ezra amongst the 
Pabbis, and by De Wette amongst the Rationalists ; 
and adopted by Moses Mendelssohn, Fiirst, and his 
fellow translators, who have '' Huldigt dem Sohne : " 

* 'Essays and Reviews,' p. 68, 69, 

t Luther, who translates "Kraft, Held," had no doubts as to the right 
interpretation of the passage 



100 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

and that the ancient Jews interpreted this Psalm of 
the Messiah* — that the rendering '' Mighty God " is 
adopted and defended by Hitzig and KnobeLf Bnt, 
without depreciating the valne of Hebrew learning and 
criticism, it may be safely asserted, that the nature 
and teaching of prophecy may be collected from any 
tolerable version : and, therefore, the Apostles, guided 
from above, did not perplex the Gentiles by discuss- 
ing the differences between the LXX. and the Hebrew 
Text, but wisely used, and sanctioned the use of that 
Greek Yersion, which they found providentially pre- 
pared, already partially known amongst the heathen, 
and at that time regarded with reverence by the Jews. 
They understood how Divine Truth may be appre- 
hended by the unlearned in a translation, and hidden 
from the wise and prudent with all their knowledge 
of the original.:]: With regard to Hebrew prophecy, 
there are three things equally perceptible in the origi- 
nal and in the versions, and at present specially requir- 
ing attention. These are : — the supernatural mission of 
the Prophets, their power to predict future events, and 
their announcements of a coming Saviour. 

2. A prophet is a man specially called and sent by 
God to communicate a Diviue revelation.§ This is 
apparent in the first place from the names given to 
those Divine messengers. They are called Prophets, 

* This is confessed even by Rashi, in the 11th century, who says, " Our 
Rabbis interpreted this Psalm of the Messiah ; " to which was added in the 
older copies of his commentary, "But in order to answer the heretics, it is 
better to interpret it of David," words still found in the commentary on the 
xxist Psalm. 

t Knobel's reasons for rejecting the translation " strong and mighty one," 
are thus expressed: — "Because bx never occurs as an adjective, and if ad- 
jective, ought to be after "niaii. The phrase *il3a bi^ ' mighty God ' occurs 
X. 21. Elsewhere also ^iSS is adjective to ^1$, as e. g. Deut. x. 17; Jer. 
xxxii. 18."— 'Commentary on Isaiah,' p. 73. 

X Matt. xi. 25. 

§ Et hue forte respexerunt Patres ecclesiae cum Prophetas Q^oXoyovs, 
rerum divinarum consultos dixere, Ita Pseudo-Dionysius, cap. 8, de CcbI. 
Hierarchia, p. 95. rcbv QeoXSyau eh, 6 Zaxapias, &c in quern lo- 
cum ita commentatur Pachymeres, p. 104. rovs iepovs irpocpiras QeoXSyovs 
(prjcrlv, ws Aoyovs Qeov rjfuu i^ayy4?^Aoi/Tas, Carpzov, * Introd. ad Lib. Bibl. 
V. T., Part iii. p. 4.' 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. |Q2 

seers^ men of God, men of the Spirit. The Hebrew 
word for prophet (I^abi) is, according to its etymology, 
supposed by some to signify " an inspired person ; " 
by others, with more probability, " An ntterer or an- 
nouncer." '^ Its meaning, and that of the English word 
prophet as nsed in the Old Testament, are fully ex- 
plained by a comparison of two passages, in the book 
of Exodus : the first, vii. 1, " See I have made thee a 
God to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy 
prophet." The second, iv. 16, "And he shall speak 
for thee (A. Y. be thy spokesman), and thou, thou 
shalt be to him for a God." What is prophet in the 
first is mouth in the second. Moses was to be as God 
to Aaron, Aaron as prophet, or mouth, or spokesman 
to Moses ; Moses to communicate to Aaron, and Aaron 
to declare the message to Pharaoh and the people. 
According to this, propjhet means the declarer or inter- 
preter of the Divine will. He is one who does not 
speak of himself («-</>' eaurov), the w^orkings of his own 
mind, but declares the mmd and will of God, and 
speaks what he receives from without.f 

3. The title " Seer ":{: refers rather to the mode of 
receiving the Divine communication than to its utter- 
ance to others. It is derived from Numb. xii. 6, " If 
there be a prophet among you, I, the Lokd, w^ill make 
myself known to him in a vision (sight, ns^xs)." The 
/Seer is therefore one who receives a Divine communica- 
tion in a vision. His vision is not the offspring of his 
own mind, but the Loed makes himself known (sJ-iinn) 

* Carpzov, ' Introd. ad Lib. Bibl. Y. T.,' Part iii., p, 8. See Gesenius, 
'Thesaurus;' Winer's edition of ' Simonis Lexicon;' Knobel's 'Prophetis- 
mus,' i. 103; Bleek, 'Einleitung in das alte Testament,' p. 412; Tlioluck, 
'Die Propheten und ihre Weissagungen,' p, 24. 

t Heidegger says, " jX'^iD proprie est omnis verborum alienorum, ex 
alieno, non proprio nutu et voluntate pi^onunciator, orator, qui, ut R. D. 
Kimchi loquitur. Echo ad instar, nihil profert aut profatur, nisi quod prius 
accepit." 'Exerc. Bibl.' viii. § 27. Augustine, ''Nihil aliud esse Prophetam 
Dei, nisi enunciatorem verborum Dei hominibus." Carpzov, ibid., p. 8. 
Comp. Spinoza, ' Tractat. Theolog. Polit.' c. 1, who is, with regard to proph- 
ecy, more candid than the Essayists. 

X For this there are two Hebrew words used, but which are equivalent in 
sense. They are both found in Isai. xxx. 10, " which say to the Seers (D'^iXT^) 
see not, and to the prophets (lit. Seers, n^)T\) prophesy not (see not) unto 
us." 



IQ2 AIDS TO PAITH. [Essay I. 

to tlie prophet. It is something received from with- 
out. " Her prophets also find no vision /V(9m the Loed 
(mn^72)*' (Lam. ii. 9). But the word " vision " does not 
necessarily imply ecstasy or symbolic representation. 
It is often equivalent to " The word of the Lokd," as, 
in 1 Sam. iii. 1, " The word of the Lokd was precious 
in those days ; there was no open vision (v"'^)." Sam- 
uel was a Seer, but " the Lokd revealed himself to 
Samuel by the word of the Lord " (1 Sam. iii. 21). So 
the first chapter of Isaiah, which is destitute of all sym- 
bolic imagery, is called " The vision ("pTn) of Isaiah ; " 
whilst the second chapter has as its title, " The ivord 
that Isaiah, the son of Amos, saiv (nm)."^ 

4. The designation " man of God," also implies in- 
timacy, communion with God, or commission from 
Him, as the similar phrases, '^ men of David," " men 
of Hezekiah," meant those who were in attendance on 
those monarchs, whom they emjDloyed ; and, in this 
sense, the prophets are called " the servants of Jeho- 
vah," and '' the messengers of God " (2 Chron. xxxvi. 

5. The phrase " man of the Spirit, mi " (Hos. ix. 
7), explains the agency by which the communication 
came, namely, by the Spirit of God ; as St. Peter says, 
" Prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, 
but holy men of God spake, being borne away {(pepofievot) 
by the Holy Ghost "^ (2 Pet. i. 21). The Old Testa- 
ment also makes this impetus of the Spirit the essence 
of prophecy. In Kumb. xi. is related the appointment 
of the seventy elders to assist Moses. The Lord says, 
" I will take of the Spmt which is upon thee, and will 
put it upon them ; " and, accordingly, in the 25th 
verse, it is said, " The Lord came down in a cloud, and 
spake imto him, and took of the Spirit that was upon 
him, and gave it to the seventy elders ; and it came to 
pass that when the Spirit rested upon them, they proph- 
esied and did not cease." In like manner, with re- 
gard to Eldad and Medad, " The Spirit (mnn) rested 
upon them . . . and they prophesied in the camp." 

* Comp. Ps. Ixxxix. 20 ; Amos i. 1 ; Obad. i. 1 ; Hab. ii. 2, 3 j Nahum, i. 1. 



Essay III.] PEOPHECT. 1q3 

That whicli caused these two men, as well as the sev- 
enty elders, to prophesy, was the resting of the Spirit 
upon them, and, therefore, Moses makes this resting of 
the Spirit equivalent to the gift of prophecy. " Would 
God that all the Lokd's people were prophets, and that 
the LoKD would put his Spirit upon them." "^ From 
this passage alone we learn, 1st, That it is the resting 
of the Spirit of the Lord upon a man that makes that 
man a prophet. It was not the spirit of Moses, but the 
Spirit that was upon Moses, that was given to the sev- 
enty elders, that which Moses himself calls " the S23irit 
of the Lord." We learn, in the next place, that it is 
the Lord who gives the Spirit. Moses was not able to 
confer it, and it was given altogether independently of 
Moses to the two men, not present at the tabernacle. 
The persons upon whom it was conferred, did not choose 
themselves, and did not take the gift by their own will. 
Similar instruction is derived from the history of Saul. 
Samuel (1 Sam. x. 6) said to him, " The Spirit of the 
Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy 
with them .... and when they came thither to the 
hill, behold, a company of prophets met him, and the 
Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among 
them." It does not appear that he had any previous 
qualifications, or preparations, or training, as required 
by Maimonides ; nor yet his servants (1 Sam. xix. 20), 
of whom it is said, " The Spirit of God was upon the 
messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied." And 
so, when he came himself on that occasion, certainly in 
no pious frame of mind, the Spirit came on him also, 
and he, like his messengers, prophesied involuntarily. 
They were <f)ep6[ievoL, borne away by the Holy Ghost, 
just as the wicked Balaam prophesied when '^ the 
Spirit of God came upon him," and Caiaphas unwit- 
tingly uttered a Divine oracle concerning the vicarious 
death of the Lord. " And this spake he not of himself, 
a<^' eavrov, but being High Priest that year, he prophe- 
sied " (John xi. 51).t 

* Compare Joel ii. 28. In the Heb. Text, iii, 1. 

t Comp. 2 Sam, xxiii. 2 ; 1 Kings, xxii. 24 ; 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 ; Isai. Isi. 
1 ; Jer. i. 9 ; Ezek. xi. 5 ; Joel ii. 29 ; (Heb. iii. 2) ; Mic, iii. 8, &c., &c. 



104 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

6. This view is confirmed bj tlie Scripture contrast 
of the false prophet. He is described as one who is 
not sent hj the Lord, and who has not the Spirit of 
God, but speaks out of his own heart his own imagina- 
tions. '' The J speak a vision of their own heart, and 
not out of the mouth of the Lord ; I sent them not, nor 
commanded them.""^ '^ They prophesy out of their own 
hearts — they follow their own spirit, and have seen 
nothing. They have seen yanity (sii:;) and lying divi- 
nation, saying, The Lord saith ; and the Lord hath not 
sent them ; and they hare made others to hope that 
they would confirm (fulfil, c^l^'^) the word." f And, 
therefore, even the Great Prophet of the Church dwells 
frequently upon the fact that He is sent, and that His 
doctrine is not His own. " My doctrine is not mine, 
but His that sent me. Lf any man will do His will, he 
shall know of the doctrine, whether it be from God, e/c 
Tov Oeov, or whether I speak of myself, cltt ifiavTov. 
He that speaketh of himself, «(/>' iavrov, seeketh his 
own glory."J As, therefore, a true prophet is one who 
is sent by God, who runs not of himself, upon whom 
the Spirit of God rests, who speaks the word of God 
and not his own ; and as there were ]3retenders, whom 
God did not send, whose words were not inspired by 
His Spirit, a test, whereby one could be distinguished 
from the other, was necessary both for the satisfaction 
of the prophet himself, and for the ^protection of the 
people from imposture. To have been trained in the 
schools of the prophets (for a time there were such 
schools §) was not enough to constitute a man a prophet. 
The prophetic commission could not be given by the 
schoolmaster, nor could the doctrines of men, or their 
instruction, communicate a Divine message, so as to 

* Jer. xxiii. 16, 21, 32, and xir. 14, &c. 

+ Ezek. xiii. 2-9. 

j John vii. 16-18 ; comp. Isai. Ixi. 

§ " Concerning the origin, arrangements, and duration of the so-called 
schools of the prophets, no detailed or circumstantial information is found in 
the Old Testament. Schools of the prophets are mentioned only in the 
histories of the prophets Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, that is from 1100-900, 
which period must therefore be regarded as the time of their existence." 
Knobel, Froj)Jietismus, ii. 39, 50. What imaginative historians have written 
on this subject is, therefore, of little value. 



Essay III.] PKOPHECY. jQg 

make the speaker's word tlie word of the Lord. Neither 
Deborah nor Hiildah had thus received the prophetic 
calL Indeed, it does not appear that any of the great 
prophets had been trained in those schools. Nothing 
less than an outward, clear, unmistakable call of God 
could satisiy the mind and conscience of the prophet 
himself. Neither inward persuasion, nor dream, nor 
ecstasy, was in itself sufficient. Moses was awake and 
in full possession of all his faculties when he saw a 
bush burning but not consumed, and heard the voice 
of the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. Samuel 
thought that Eli called, and went twice to the aged 
priest, before he knew that it was the Lord's voice ; 
and was, therefore, fully roused from slumber before 
he received the Divine message. Isaiah's eyes were 
opened to see the Lord on his throne, and his ears to 
hear the words " Whom shall I send, and who will go 
for us?" Jeremiah objected his youth, and did not 
accept the commission until the Lord put forth his 
hand and touched his mouth. Ezekiel felt that '' the 
hand of the Lord was upon him." Amos was a herds- 
man, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit, and the Lord 
took him " as he followed the flock," and said, " Go, 
prophesy unto my people Israel." There was a super- 
natural call. A specific message, also, was delivered, 
and therefore the prophet was able to say, "• Hear ye 
the word of the Lord," " Thus saith the Lord." Even 
after this external and supernatural call, every time the 
prophet uttered a new oracle, it was the result of a new 
communication, and a special command. He was still 
unable to prophesy at will. He might inquire of the 
Lord and ask counsel, as Moses did in the case of the 
Sabbath-breaker, or of Zelophehad's daughters, but had 
no permanent habilitation to declare the will of God. 
Without this supernatural call, and without this spe- 
cific message, no one can, according to Scripture idiom, 
without great confusion of mind, or wilful and dishon- 
est abuse of language, be said to possess anything like 
prophetic inspiration. The Apostles of the New Testa- 
ment, called directly by the Lord Jesus Christ, moved 



106 ^^^^ TO FAITH, [Essay III. 

by His Holy Spirit, and entrusted with a specific mes- 
sage, were and may be called prophets in the true sense 
of the word, for they were able to affirm that the Gos- 
pel proclaimed of them was " not of man, but by 
revelation of Jesus Christ ; " and they communicated it 
" not in words, which man's v/isdom teacheth, but 
which the Holy Ghost teacheth." But to speak of 
Poets, ancient or modern, or Philosophers, or Lawgiv- 
ers, as being inspired, like Moses or Isaiah, is simply to 
confound things Divine and human, and to manifest 
great mistiness of apprehension, or daring profanity of 
spirit. It is just as contrary to Scriptural statement,"^^ 
and as revolting to Christian reverence, as to identify 
the prophetic character and calling with that of the 
demagogues of Greece.f Poets and Philosophers exer- 
cise the high natural gifts bestowed by God, according 
to the movings of their will or the impulse of their gen- 
ius ; apply, and sometimes abuse them, according to 
the state of their hearts ; but do not pretend to any 
external call from God, nor claim for their words the 
reverence due to the word of the Almighty. The He- 
brew prophets announced themselves as God's messen- 
gers, claimed obedience and reverence for their message 
as the word of God, and therefore carried with them 
credentials for the satisfaction of the people. Tliese 
credentials were, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, 
miracle and prediction.'!!;. To accredit Moses as His 
messenger to the children of Israel, He empowered him 

* "At quamvis scientia naturalis divina sit, ejus tamen propagatores non 
possunt vocari prophetse." — Spinoza, Tractat. TJieolog. Polit. Opera, torn. iii. 
p. 16. 

t Leo < Vorlesungen,' 159, 168; Berlin, 1828; Salvador, as above, p. 197. 

X This is admitted even by D. F. Strauss : "To accredit his Divine mis- 
sion to the people, Grod enabled Moses to perform certain acts beyond ordi- 
nary human power ; and Moses refers to this to prove that he did not come 

of himself but was sent by God Hand in hand with miracle, prediction 

appears in Biblical history as a credential of Revelation. Thus in the Old 
Testament God gives Moses a prediction, the fulfilment of which should 

certify his Divine mission (Exod. iii. 12) In the case of the prophets the 

occurrence of wonderful events which they had predicted is the proof of their 
Divine commission (1 Kings xvii. 1, xvii'i. 41, &c,). The prophets also, not 
rarely, foretell the occurrence of some event, soon to happen, that its occur- 
rence may be a sign, that what they have predicted concerning the distant 
future is from God (1 Sam. ii. 34, x. 7, and 1 Kings xiii. 3, 2 Kings, xix. 29; 
Isai. vii. 2; Jer. xliv. 29)." — GlaubensleTire, vol. i. p. 86-89. 



Essay III.] PEOPHEOY. 107 

to make three superlmman manifestations of power, say- 
ing, " If they will not believe thee, neither hearken to 
the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the 
voice of the latter sign." And therefore the prophet 
like nnto Moses, also appealed to His works as greater 
testimony than that of John the Baptist,* and says, 
" If I had not done among them the works which none 
other man did, they had not had sin, bnt now have 
they both seen and hated both me and my Father." 
The Law of Moses also provided another criterion of a 
true or false prophet, in the fulfilment or non-fulfilment 
of his word, " When a prophet speaketh in the name 
of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, 
that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken " 
(Deut. xviii. 22). To this Jeremiah alludes when he 
says, " The prophet which prophesieth of peace, when 
the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall 
the prophet be known, that the Lord hath truly sent 
him " (Jer. xxviii. 9). 

7. To declare the will of God, and deliver His mes- 
sage, whether it regarded the past, the present, or the 
future, was the prophet's great duty. And therefore, 
when the Jewish lawgiver was communicating moral 
or ceremonial precepts, received from God, and when 
the Messiah, in his Sermon on the Mount, was explain- 
ing the spirituality of the Law, they were, in the strict 
sense of the y^'ovA^ projyhesying just as much as when 
Moses predicted tha destinies of Israel, and the Lord 
foretold the destruction and treading down of Jerusalem. 
To have received a call and message direct from God, 
and to deliver it, constituted the essence of prophetism. 
But if we are to form our idea from the Scriptures, we 
must admit that the Hebrew people believed that the 
prophets were endowed with, or could attain to, super- 
human knowledge, for the benefit and advantage of 
His people. This belief was rooted in their conception 
of the Divine character. Whether we take the Hebrew 
Scriptures as inspired or not, it is an incontrovertible 
fact that the fundamental idea of the Hebrew religion 

* Jobu XV. 24 J comp. Matt. xi. 1-5. 



108 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay 111. 

is that Jehovali is a God who reveals Himself to his 
creatures; that He has not left the human race to 
grope their way to the regions of religion or morality 
as they best can, but that from the beginning He has 
taken His children by the hand, cared for their welfare, 
made known to them His will, and marked out for them 
the way to happiness. This idea runs through all the 
books of the Old Testament, — Law, History, Psalms, 
Prophecy, — and is taken up in the E'ew Testament, 
where is the fullest revelation of the love of our 
Heavenly Father to man. But the Hebrew believed 
not only in God as one who reveals Himself for the 
benefit of the race, but as the loving and watchful 
Father, who superintended all the everyday concerns of 
each individual, and who, though He dwelt in tlie high 
and holy place, yet had regard to the lowly, and 
considered nothing too small or insignificant for His 
care. This is evident in the prayer of Abraham's ser- 
vant to be guided to Kebekah, in the increase of Jacob's 
cattle, in Leah's fruitful ness, in the answer to Hannah's 
prayer, not to mention many similar and well-known 
traits in the lives of God's ancient saints. As, there- 
fore, the Hebrew people, high and low, regarded the 
prophet as a messenger from God, enlightened and in- 
structed by the Lloly Spirit, they ascribed to him a 
supernatural knowledge and the power to give in- 
formation not attainable by human reasoning or sagacity 
— in fact the same power possessed by the High Priest 
of procuring from God a miraculous response by means 
of the Urim and Thummim: and as they believed in 
God as their Father, they trusted that He was interested 
in all their troubles and anxieties, and would not con- 
sider their temporal concerns too insignificant for His 
gracious consideration. Hence it is recorded that Ke- 
bekah went to inquire of the Lord respecting the subject 
of her anxiety. David inquired of the Lord, by means 
of the ephod, whether he should smite the Philistines 
and save Keilah; and again, whether the men of Keilah 
would deliver him into'the hands of Saul ; and received 
answers from the Lord. So Saul's servants thought 



EssATlIL] PEOFHECT. IO9 

they miglit go to Samuel and inquire concerning the 
lost asses. In like manner King Jehoshaphat wished to 
inquire of the Lord, by means of a prophet, before he 
ventured into the battle against the Assyrians. And 
again, when he and Jehoram were in difficulties from 
want of water, he asked, "Is there not a prophet of the 
Lord here that we may inquire of the Lord by him ? " 
Even ungodly men like Zedekiah (Jer. xxi. 2, and 
xxxvii. 17), and the elders of Israel (Ezek. xiv. 1 — Y), 
or heathens like king Benhadad (2 Kings, viii. 7, 8, &c.), 
believed in this power, and were glad, when occasion 
required, to avail themselves of it. And there is not 
only no intimation that they erred in making such in- 
quiries, but Joshua and the men of Israel are represented 
as having done wrong because they made peace with 
the Gibeonites, and " asked not counsel at the mouth 
of the Lord" (Josli. ix. 14). And when Ahaziah sent 
to Ekronto inquire of Baal-zebub, "the angel of the 
Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet 
the messengers of the King of Samaria, and say unto 
them. Is it not because there is not a God in Israel that 
ye go to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?" 
Indeed, some Christian commentators of great name, 
as well as some of the Rabbis, think that in the Law 
God has made special provision for this sort of inquiry 
when He" forbids them to be diviners or consulters with 
familiar spirits, and promises them a prophet like Moses 
to reveal His will (Deut. xviii. 10 — 19). It is certain 
that Isaiah insists on the duty of inquiring of the Lord 
when he says, "And when they shall say unto you, 
Inquire of the familiar spirits, and of wizards who peep 
and mutter: Should not a people inquire of their God ? 
For the living, should they inquire of the dead?" 
(viii. 19.)* 

In some of the cases just mentioned inquiry is made 
respecting the future, and it is evident that David ahd 

* Lowth, and after him, Knobel, translate the last clause, *' Instead of the 
living [God] should they inquire of the dead [idols?]," but contrary to the 
parallelism. The prophet is remonstrating against the practice of inquiring 
of the spirits of departed men. ^1k is the spirit of a dead man, and there- 
fore QiriAj must refer to something similar. 



110 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

Jelioshaphat, as well as Zedekiah, believed that through 
the priest or the prophet they could receive from God, 
respecting contingencies, ansAvers which the Divine pre- 
science could alone supply; that is, that through the 
Divine help the priest or the prophet could predict 
future events. This faith rested ujDon the doctrine of 
God as taught in the Law, and exemplified in the whole 
of their previous history. Before there were prophets 
God Himself predicted the future. The announcement 
of the flood to JS'oah and the limitation of the day of 
grace to 120 years ^ are predictions. ISToah knew the 
future of the human race, and by the Divine instruction 
was enabled to provide against the coming calamity. 
The declaration, at a time when Abraham was child- 
less, that his posterity should be afflicted in a strange 
land for 400 years, but that their enemies should be 
punished and they come forth with great wealth, was 
clearly a prediction. Jacob is represented as having 
on his death-bed predicted what should befall his pos- 
terity "in futurity of days" (D^7a^'^ rr^nn.sn). Joseph's 
interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams was a prediction of 
the seven years of plenty and of famine, and came from 
God as well as the dreams. "What God is about to do 
he showeth unto Pharaoh " (Gen. xl. 28). It is recorded 
of most of the prophets mentioned in the historic books 
that they uttered predictions. Deborah foretold the 
fate of Sisera. The man of God announced to Eli the 
judgments coming upon his family, and the death of 
his sons in one day. Samuel confirmed this prediction 
and declared its certain fulfilment, and it is remarked 
" that the Lord let none of his words fall to the ground. 
And all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, knew that 
Samuel was accredited (or verified -i^J^s) for a prophet 
to the Lord." Micaiah foretells the defeat of the allied 
armies of Judah and Israel, and rests his prophetic 
pretensions upon the fulfilment of what he had an- 

* The words "Yet his days shall be 120 years" do not refer to a diminu- 
tion of the long life of the antediluyians, nor to the subsequent measure of 
human life, but to the length of the day of grace, giyen them to repent. 
Such is the interpretation of the Targums, Luther, Calyin, and many of the 
best modern commentators. See Delitsch on Genesis, p. 237, 8. 



Essay IIIJ PKOPHECY. m 

noimced. ^'If thou return at all in peace, the Lord 
hath not spoken by me. And he said, Hearken, O 
people, every one of you." Elijah predicted that there 
should be no rain but according to his word, the death 
of Jezebel, the extermination of Ahab's posterity. 
El isha foretold the overthrow of the Moabites, the three 
defeats of the Syrians. All these things, as well as the 
birth of Josiah, and the continuance of Jehu's posterity 
on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation, are re- 
lated as predictions, in the ordinary sense of the w^ord, 
— as supernatural communications from the Lord, and 
the fulfilment specially noticed. 

It may indeed be said, and has been said, that these 
predictions and the narratives connected with them are 
mythical narrations, written after the events when the 
historic substrata had had time to be transmuted into 
the supernatural. But that, if true, would not alter the 
fact that the Hebrews believed in the power of the 
prophets to predict events by supernatural aid from on 
high ; that this belief is inseparably connected with 
their ideas of the Divine Being, and everywhere visi- 
ble in the historical books from Genesis to Kehemiah ; 
in fact that the power of predicting future events is 
one of the essential features in the character of a 
prophet. And as it is incontrovertibly a part of the 
popular belief, so it is the doctrine of the prophets 
themselves, as recorded in their writings. It is hardly 
possible to open a page of any book of the prophets on 
which there is not a prediction. " By far the greatest 
portion of the prophetic discourses consists in delinea- 
tions of the future, or predictions referring partly to the 
Jehovah people, and therefore to the kingdoms of Israel 
and Judah, partly to foreign nations who came in con- 
tact with the Hebrews, .... partly to individuals of 
the former, seldom of the latter."* Amos lays it down 
as an axiom that the Lord reveals to the prophets his 
purposes before they are realized. " Surely the Lord 
God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret (inio) 
to his servants the prophets." (Amos iii. 7.) Upon 

* Kuobel's * Prophetismus/ i. 293. 



112 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

which, Hitzig says : " The prophet predicts the coraing 
evil, which is always an ordinance of Jehovah ; for 
Jehovah makes him acquainted beforehand with that 
which He has decreed." Isaiah makes the prediction 
of future events a distinguishing characteristic and pre- 
rogative of Deity, and therefore a proof that the God 
of Israel is the true and living God. " Eemember the 
former things of old : for I am God and there is none 
else : I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring 
futurity (n-^nn^^) from former time, and from ancient 
times the things that are not yet done " (xlvi. 9, 10) ; 
npon which words Knobel thus comments: "The bet- 
ter view consists in the knowledge that Jehovah, and 
none besides, is God, that He is God and nothing like 
Him. To this view they can easily come by remem- 
bering the former things, that is, the prophecies for- 
merly given, which are now being fulfilled (xlii. 9). 
These prove Jehovah's foreknowledge, and thereby 
His Godhead." In like manner Isaiah makes the 
want of predictions amongst idolaters a proof that 
their gods are no gods. "Produce your cause, bring 
forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. 
Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall 
happen : Let them show the former things what they 
be, that we may consider them and know the latter 
end of them; or declare for us things for to come. 
Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we 
may know that ye are gods " (xli. 21-23) ; where Gese- 
nius says, "A new challenge to the idols as in verse 1, 
&c., again with a reference to Cyrus, but also with a 
reference to former predictions of the prophets, such as 
the heathen had none to show." Knobel's words are 
still stronger: "Let them bring forth their proofs, 
especially that one which rests upon correct prediction 
of the future ; for the foreknowledge of the future is 
the peculiar attribute of God, and proves Deity, on 
which account it was also the credential of the true 
prophet. (Deut. xviii. 21. Jer. xxviii. 9.) And, on the 
contrary, the idols never were able, nor are they now, 
to announce the future. They should declare the 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. II3 

things to come hereafter, that is, what should after- 
ward happen, and Jehovah will see and recognise that 
they are gods, namely, when their prediction is accom- 
plished." In these places, and many more, it is taught 
that Jehovah gives predictions to His servants the 
prophets, and also that He fulfils them. "He con- 
firmeth the word of His servants, and performeth the 
counsel of His messengers" (Isai. xliv, 26); that by so 
doing He proves not only that the prophets are true 
prophets, but that He Himself is the true God. We 
have in fact the same proof of the truth of Divine Eev- 
elation that has been urged in modern times from ful- 
filled prophecy, and which has the highest possible 
sanction in the words of our Lord, "And now I have 
told you before it come to pass, that when it is come 
to pass ye might believe." (John xiv. 29 : comp. xiii. 
9, and xvi. 4.) 

8. It is eyident that the Hebrew people believed 
that their prophets could predict the future. The 
prophets themselves aflSrm that they have the power 
and utter predictions. Were they impostors, or did 
they deceive themselves ? That they were impostors, 
is not believed by those Rationalists who have given 
most attention to this subject, as Gesenius, Ewald, and 
Knobel, and is disproved by their doctrine and their 
life. Concerning God they teach that He is One, the 
Lord, Creator of the heavens and the earth. Everlast- 
ing, Almighty, Omniscient, Free, All wise. Holy, a 
righteous Judge, a merciful Saviour, the Governor of 
the world, forgiving iniquity and sin.* Their notion 
of the religion acceptable to Him is also equally free 
from fanaticism and formality. They denounce those 
who " draw near to God with their lips, but remove 
their heart far from Him." They teach that to reform 
the life is better than external demonstrations. "To 
what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? . . . 
Wash you ; make you clean ; put away the evil of 

* See Isai. xl. 28. xlir. 6 ; Jer. x, 10, xxiii. 23, 24; Isai. xiv. 24, 27 ; Jer. 
xxxii. 19, xvii. 10; Hab. i. 13; Mai. ii. 10 ; Isai. Ixiv. 8; Jer. xi. 20; Joel ii. 
13 ; Mic. vii. 18 ; Dan. ii. 28 ; Ezek. xxxi. 9 ; Amos iii. 6 ; Ezek. xviii. 4 ; Hos. 
xiii. 14, &c., &c. 



114 ^IDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

your doings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil, 
learn to do well ; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed; 
judge tlie fatherless; plead for the widow" (Isaiah i. 
11 — 17). "I will have mercy, not sacrifice." They 
proclaim that honesty, mercy, and humility are the 
( weightiest matters of the Law. " What doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with thy God ? " (Mic. vi. 8.) to 
preach such doctrine was their business ; and boldly 
to reprove all who lived in opposition to it, whether 
kings, or priests, or people, was their practice, and this 
without fee or reward, for they received nothing for 
their prophesying, but often exposed themselves to 
persecution and death. They sought not wealth, or 
honour, or favour, or ease. They were temperate, self- 
denying, patient, valiant for the truth, leaning upon 
God as their stay, and looking to God alone for their 
reward. They were neither morose ascetics, nor un- 
lettered fanatics. Married and living amongst the 
people, in cottages and in courts, they discharged the 
ordinary duties of citizens. They cultivated letters, 
and have left a literature unique in the history of the 
world; if judged according to a human standard, un- 
surpassed in genius, sublimity, grandeur; but in purity 
and morality unequalled by any nation in any age. 
This prophetic order beginning, if reckoned from Sam- 
uel, nearly 400 years before the birth of Rome, and 
closing when the bloom of Grecian genius was only 
appearing, is, when compared with the state of the 
world around them, a phenomenon as wonderful as the 
power of prediction which they claimed. The best 
days of Greece and Rome can furnish no heroes, pa- 
triots, or moral teachers to compare with this long and 
wonderful succession of holy, disinterested, bold re- 
provers of vice and preachers of virtue, unambitious 
examples of genuine patriotism, living for the glory of 
God, and the good of man ; whose writings are so im- 
bued with imperishable and universal truth, that for 
nearly twenty-four centuries after the death of the last 
r*f the goodly fellowship, they have continued and still 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. 215 

continue to touch the hearts, and influence the faith, 
the thoughts and lives of the wisest, greatest, and most 
excellent of the human race. That such men could be 
deceivers, or that imposture could have exercised a 
power so enduring, is impossible. That tliej could 
have been self-deceiving enthusiasts is equally incredi- 
ble. JSTeither their doctrine, nor their lives, nor their 
writings savour of enthusiasm, nor can they be ac- 
counted for as mere ebullitions of genius. Why did 
not the poetic inspiration and colossal intellect of 
Greece produce similar results? "Why did not Eurip- 
ides prophesy? Why did Plato never rise to moral 
purity ? "^ "It is because of the theocracy," say modern 
diviners. Moses founded a theocracy, and prophetism 
was the necessary result. But this is only to remove 
the difficulty one step farther back. Why did not the 
Spartan, or Athenian, or Locrian lawgivers, or the 
royal disciple of Egeria found a theocracy like that of 
Moses? Why did not their legislations bring forth 
prophets ? In a certain sense prophecy did arise out 
of the original relation established between God and 
Israel. The same Divine Being, who commanded the 
theocracy, gave also the prophets, inspired them with 
their doctrines, revealed to them the future, and ena- 
bled them to utter predictions far beyond the powers 
of human foreboding, sagacity, or conjecture, which by 
their fulfilment, of old and in the present time, demon- 
strate that they were not self-deceiving enthusiasts, but 
spake as they were moved by Him who knows the 
end from the beginning. 

9. It has indeed been said by foreign writers, and 
lately repeated in this country, that the predictions 
arose out of the circumstances of the days in which the 
prophets lived, and do not extend beyond the horizon 

* Of all the great writers of antiquity Plato is the most striking witness 
to the corruption of fallen hunaan nature, and the propensity of the grandest 
intellect, when left to itself, to extenuate the foulest and most odious vice. 
In nothing does the superiority of Hebrew ethics shine out more brightly. 
See Wuttke, ' Handbuch der Christlichen Sittenlehre, pp. 55-67. At the 
same time the mercy inculcated in the prophets maybe favourably contrasted 
with the Greek doctrine concerning slaves, incurables, cripples, exposure of 
children, abortion, suicide, &c. 



11(5 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

of their times. The interpreter "cannot quote IN'ahnni 
denouncing ruin against ^^ineveh, or Jeremiah against 
Tjre, without remembering that abeady the Babylonian 
power threw its shadow across Asia, and Nebuchad- 
nezzar was mustering his armies." ^ Some foreign 
critics, though in the same spirit, take a different view 
of the occasion of Xahum's prophecy, ascribing it to an 
attempt by the Medes and their eastern allies. " This 
is the remarkable expedition," says Ewald, speaking 
of the Medes and their oriental confederates under 
Phraortes, "which l!Tahum saw with his own eyes, 
when, predicting the approaching end of Nineveh, he 
wrote his still extant oracle ; he lived in Alqush, some- 
what-farther east of the Tigris, and was therefore able, 
in that place, to see the whole host as it advanced 
against Nineveh." f The latter supposition, that Na- 
hum lived near Nineveh, is for good reasons rejected 
by Knob el, who affirms that he lived at Elkosli in Gali- 
lee, and, therefore, did not see the Median power ad- 
vancing against the Assyrian capital. With regard to 
the relative strength of the Babylonian and Median 
powers in comparison with that of the Assyrian empire 
at that time, there was nothing to lead the prophet to 
anticipate that either the one or the other was able to 
take Nineveh, or overthrow the Assyrian monarchy, 
but the contrary. According to Knobel, who, in the 
eyes of nationalists, is an unexceptionable witness, 
Nahum wrote this prophecy between the years Y13 
and 711 b.c. Nineveh was not overthrown until about 
612. ^ Just about the time when Nahum wrote, or, 
according to others, three or four years § later, the 
Medes under Deioces revolted from the Assyrians, and 
set up an independent monarchy. Their power at that 
time could not have been very formidable, for fifty 
years later, when the Median empire had been consoli- 

* ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 68. 

t * Geschichte Israel's,' iii. 389. See alsoKnobel's ' Prophetismiis,' ii. 212. 

X According to Prideaux ; but according to Usher, 626. Weber (' Welt- 
geschichte,' i. 47) places the total destruction of Xinereh in 606. 

§ According to Knobel, the Medes revolted in the years immediately pre- 
ceding 710, and made Deioces king, and he reigned from 710 on. Comp. M. 
von Niebulir, ' Geschichte Assur's und Babel's/ pp. 177, 178. 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. H^ 

dated by the long and wise government of Deioces, it 
was still unable to cope with the Assyrians, by whom 
their army was utterly defeated, their king slain, and 
their capital taken. The effort of Phraortes was equally 
unsuccessful, and therefore Hitzig says, " The attack 
of Phraortes is not a sufficient ground [for the confident 
tone of the prophecy]. The Assyrians destroyed him 
and his whole host. The capital, which Ewald sup- 
poses to have been vigorously besieged, does not appear 
to have been approached by any danger of the kind." * 
The Babylonians were just as little a match for the 
Assyrians, for, some fifty years before, Esarhaddon had 
seized Babylon, and reunited it to the Assyrian monar- 
chy, f When, then, E"ahum wrote, the shadow of the 
Babylonian or Median power was not such as to cause 
much alarm for the existence of Nineveh. I^otwith- 
standing the loss of an army of 185,000 men, the As- 
syrian power was still the greatest in the world ; and 
whilst it was still the greatest, whilst the kingdom of 
Babylon was still so inferior as to be unable to under- 
take anything against it by itself, and was therefore 
glad to seek the alliance of Hezekiah, one hundred 
years before the event, J^ahum predicted the siege and 
utter destruction of J^ineveh. " And it shall come to 
pass, that all they that look upon thee shall flee from 
thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste . . . The gates of 
thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies ; 
the fire shall devour thy bars. Draw the waters for 
the siege, fortify thy strong holds ; go into clay, and 
tread the mortar, make strong the brickkiln. There 
shall the fire devour thee: the sword shall cut thee off, 
it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm !" J Can any 
of those men who now assert that this prophecy was a 
mere conjecture, tell us what will be the fate of Paris 
or London one hundred years hence? They deny the 
miracle of supernatural foreknowledge, and believe 
what is more incredible far; that unassisted human 

* Hitzig's * Minor Prophets,' p. 225. Comp. von Niebuhr, pp. 188, 189. 
+ According to Niebuhr, Sennacherib seized Babylon, and made Esarhad- 
don viceroy, pp. 177, 8. 
X Nahum iii. 7, 14, 15. 



118 ^IDS TO FAITH. [Essay IIL 

knowledge can lift the veil from futurity, and presage 
the destinies of empires. IN^ahum is, however, not the 
only prophet who uttered predictions concerning the 
Assyrians. " Assur had not yet passed the Euphrates 
as a conqueror, and the victorious Jeroboam still reigned 
in the kingdom of Israel, when the prophetic voice of 
Hosea and Amos already threatened their countrymen 
with the scourge of Assyria. (Amos vi. 14, vii. 17 ; 
Hos. X. 7, 8, xiv. 1.) Some years before the fall of 
Samaria, Micah uttered these words: — "What is the 
guilt of Jacob, is it not Samaria? And what are the 
idol-high places of Judah, are they not Jerusalem? 
Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, 
and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down 
the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover 
the foundations thereof." But for three years the As- 
syrian was obliged to lie before the well-fortified city 
before it fell. Concerning Judah also Micah nttered 
the oracle: — ^Evil came down from the Lord to the 
gate of Jerusalem,' ^ and thereupon begins the an- 
nouncement of the desolation of particular country 
towns of Judea. But at that time Shalmaneser passed 
by the kingdom of Judah in peace, and Hezekiah con 
tinned to pay his tribute. It was not nntil the throne 
had got a new occupant in Sennacherib that he ceased 
to do so, and thus brought the Assyrian host before the 
gates of Jerusalem, and caused the fulfilment of the 
j)rophecy. But long before this, when the unbelieving 
Ahaz called upon Tiglath Pileser for help against Syria 
and Israel, Isaiah, with prophetic eye, looking far be- 
yond the then present, announced to him that through 
the King of Assyria danger should come upon him, and 
his father's house, and his people, such as had not been 
since the division of the kingdoms. (Isai. vii. 17, 18.) 
Ahaz himself sank into a state of disgraceful Assyrian 
vassalage, and, perhaps, even experienced the horrors 
of w^ar in his own land. (2 Chron. xxviii. 20.) But in 

* He might have added, "0 thou inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot 
to the swift beast ; she is the beginning of the sin to the daughter of Zion ; 
for the transgressions of Israel were found in thee." 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. 129 

the clays of Hezekiali the word of the prophet was ful- 
filled in full measure by Sennacherib."*^ 

But the accuracy of Micah's language and of 
Isaiah's prophetic foreknowledge are worthy of atten- 
tion. Micah foretells utter destruction to Samaria; to 
Judah only chastisement, which should reach to the 
gate of Jerusalem, but no farther. " For it is incura- 
ble, every one of her blows — it (the blow) is come to 
Judah. He hath reached (r:^3 touched, or smitten) as 

far as the gate of my people, to Jerusalem For 

the inhabitant of Maroth waited carefully for good ; but 
evil came down from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem. 
O thou inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot to the 
swift beast." From the history it appears that the 
word of Micah was exactly fulfilled. ''In the four- 
teenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib King of 
Assyria came up against all the defenced cities and 
took them [Lachish among the number]. And the 
Kmg of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jeru- 
salem with a great army." (Isaiah xxxvi. 1, &c.) The 
land of Judah was overrun ; the evil reached even to 
the gate of Jerusalem, for the city was invested ; but, 
in conformity with Micah's words, it never entered the 
city — the Assyrian power was broken, and the king 
returned by the way he came, as Isaiah had foretold. 
There is no doubt about the predictions, or the fact that 
they were uttered before the event, nor yet about the 
fulfilment. In the time of Ahaz, Isaiah, who had also 
foretold the chastisement to be infiicted on Judah by 
the Assyrians, expressly announced a miraculous de- 
struction of the Assyrian host. " Therefore shall the 
Lord, the Lord of Hosts, send among his fat ones lean- 
ness ; and under his glory He shall kindle a burning 
like the burning of a fire. And the light of Israel shall 
be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame : and it shall 
burn and devour his briers in one day ; and shall con- 
sume the glory of his forest and of his fruitful field both 
soul and body, and they shall be like the pining away 
of a sick man," &c. (Isai. x. 16-19.) And, again, 

* Tholuck, * Die Propheten und ihre Weissagungen,' pp. 83, 84. 



120 ^II^S TO EAITH. [Essay III. 

XXX. 27-32, Isaiali also predicts that the Assyrian shall 
be broken in his land at least thirty years before the 
event. That the Assyrian power should be broken was 
then improbable ; that it should be broken on the 
mountains of Judah more improbable still, beyond 
human conjecture, and yet it was accomplished. The 
prediction is found Isai. xiv. 24: — 27. "The Lord of 
Hosts hath sworn, saying. Surely as I have thought, so 
shall it come to pass ; and as I have purposed so shall 
it stand; that I wdll break the Assyrian in my land, 
and upon my mountains tread him under foot: then 
shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden de- 
part from off their shoulders. This is the purpose that 
is purposed upon the whole earth ; and this is the hand 
that is stretched out upon all nations, for the Lord of 
Hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it ? And 
his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back? " 
Modern, even sceptical, criticism assigns this fragment 
to Isaiah, and considers it as a part of the prophecy 
beginning at x. 5, and going on to the end of chapter 
xii. The wording is remarkable. It implies miracle, 
and by miracle the Assyrian host was destroyed : tlie 
fulfilment is not only narrated in the history, but re- 
corded in several Psalms, and von ^Niebuhr shows how, 
notwithstanding the continuance of Sennacherib's em- 
pire, and its prosperity under Esarhaddon, the Assyr- 
ian power was then really " broken." 

With regard to Assyria's successor, Babylon, there 
are predictions equally sure. That one hundred and 
fifty years before the event, the Babylonian captivity 
was foretold in the most unequivocal and remarkable 
language by Isaiah, is as certain as any fact in history* 
In the xxxixth chapter of that prophet we read that on 
Hezekiah's recovery Merodach Baladan, King of Baby- 
lon, sent to congratulate him. Hezekiah vainglorious- 
ly exhibited to him all his wealth. Isaiah was soon 
at hand to rebuke his vanity, and announced the Lord's 
purpose concerning Hezekiah's posterity. " Hear the 
word of the Lord of Hosts : Behold the days come, 
that all that is in thine house, and that which thy 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. 121 

fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be 
carried to Babylon : nothing shall be left, saith the 
Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, 
which thou shalt beget, shall they take away : and 
they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the King of 
Babylon." It is certain that IS"abonassar had shaken 
off the Assyrian yoke, and made Babylon an in- 
dependent kingdom, and that some twelve years after 
his death reigned Merodach Baladan.* The genuine- 
ness of the chapter in Isaiah has never been doubted. 
The circumstances of Babylon w^ere not then such as 
to raise any conjecture respecting its future greatness. 
It was independent, but not superior to Assyria ; on 
the contrary, as we have already said, Babylon was 
soon after reduced again to Assyrian obedience. 

Micali also predicted the captivity and the deliver- 
ance from Babylon. Ch. ii. 10, he says, "Arise ye and 
depart : for this is not your rest : Because it is polluted 
it shall destroy you even with a sore destruction ; " iii. 
12, he announces that Jerusalem shall be ploughed as 
a iield, Jerusalem become heaps, and the temple and 
its place be desolate ; iv. 10, he says, " Thou shalt go 
forth out of the city, thou shalt dwell in the field, and 
thou shalt go even to Babylon: there shalt thou be 
delivered ; there the Lord shall redeem thee from the 
hand of thine enemies." This prediction is the more 
remarkable, because, as we have seen, he predicts the 
overrunning of the land of Judali by the Assyrians, 
declares that the evil should only come to the gate of 
Jerusalem ; and v. 5, 6, foretells the deliverance in the 
land of Israel. " This one rr) [the Messiah, the Son of 
God] shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come 
into our land," and announces the wasting of the land 
of Assyria, f He could not, therefore, have expected 
that Assyria was to bring them to Babylon ; " and still 
less that at Babylon they should be delivered. Micali 
prophesied before the destruction of Samaria, i.e. be- 
fore 724, that is, about a hundred and forty years 
before the destruction by JSTebuchadnezzar, and con- 

* Niebuhr, pp. 46, 47, and 169. t Mic. i. 9, ii. 4, 5, 10, vii. 13. 

6 



122 ^-™5 TO FAITH. [Essay in. 

seqiientlv about t^vo liiindred before tlie deliverance 
from Babylon. ^ 

10. The mention of Babylon reminds ns of another 
remarkable and indubitable prediction as remarkably 
fulfilled, and tlie fulfilment of wliicli shows the ground- 
lessness of recent insinuations. One of these was no- 
ticed above. '•' He cannot quote Jeremiah 

[denouncing ruin against Tyre] without remembering 
that abeady the Babylonian power threw its shade 
across Asia, and Xebuchadnezzar was mustering his 
armies." But surely the writer of these words could 
not have forgotten that the ruin of Tyi'e by the 
Chaldeans had been predicted long before the days of 
Jeremiah. In the twenty-third chapter of Isaiah is 
f lund the burden of Tyre. The siege, the interruption 
of her commerce, the flight of her citizens, and the 
lamentations of her mariners and her colonies, are all 
graphically foretold here — and even the authors of the 
ruin are named. In the thirteenth verse, A.T., we read, 
"Behold the land of the Chaldeans. This people was not 
till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the 
wilderness : they set up the towers thereof, they raised 
up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin." 
There are various translations of this verse, f but that 
the Chaldeans are predicted as the desti'oyers of Tyre 
is admitted by some of the highest modern authorities. 
Knobel says, ^^ Behold^ the land of the Chaldeans. 
With the vrord ' Behold ' the author introduces some- 
thing new to which he directs special attention. That 
something is the destroyers of Tyre whom he is about 
to name. Gesenius has " The sense of verse 13 is — 
Behold, this peoj)le of the Chaldees, a little while ago 

* Tholuck remarks vrell, that as the Babylonish captivity is foretold both 
by Isaiah and Micah, and yet their -^vritings admitted to' be genuine, the 
main objection against the genuineness of Isai. xiii. sir. and xl.-LsTi. is re- 
moved. 

+ Hitzig has 

Behold, the land of the Chaldeans, 

The people there, that vras no people. 

Assur created it for the inhabitants of the desert. 

They erect their castles, 

Destroy her palaces. 

Make her a heap of ruin. 



Essay III.] , PEOPHECY. 223 

inhabitants of the deserts, to whom the Assyrians first 
assigned settled habitations and made it a people : this 
hitherto insignificant people, scarcely deserving men- 
tion, shall be the instrument of the destruction of the 
ancient world-wide famous city of Tyre." If this be 
the sense, as is generally agreed, then we have a pre- 
diction far surpassing the powers of human foresight, 
and not suggested by existing circumstances. The 
deniers of prediction feel this, and therefore use the 
most violent means to get rid of it, not scrupling to 
alter the text and change the meaning of the Hebrew 
words. Even the great Ewald is not above this 
violence. Without a shadow of critical support he 
would for " Chaldeans " substitute " Canaanites," and 
interpret " Behold, the land of the Canaanites (the 
Phoenicians), this people is no more, Assur has made 
it a desolation ; they (the Phoenicians) erected their 
country villas, they built their palaces, he made it a 
ruin." I. Olshausen is guilty of still greater violence : 
he would strike out of the verse a number of words at 
the beginning, including, of course, "Chaldeans." 
Meier proposes to substitute " Kittiim " for " Chal- 
deans," and to strike out the latter part of the verse : 
all which criticism Knobel unceremoniously calls 
" bodenlose Willkiihr." Others would get rid of the 
whole as ungenuine, not written by Isaiah, but by 
some one in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.* 
Knob el and Gesenius get rid of the difiiculty by find- 
ing the event alluded to in Shalmaneser's attempt on 
Tyre, when he subdued the whole of continental 
Phoenicia, but was unable to take New Tyre on 
the island, and established a blockade for five years. 
The Chaldeans, they say, served, and were some of the 
best troops, in the Assyrian army. But this is also to 
do violence to the text. The prophet does not say that 
the Assyrians should destroy the city, but explicitly 
and emphatically points out the Chaldeans as the miners 
of Tyre. " Behold, the land of the Chaldeans. This 
is the people — it was not [a people], Assur founded it 

* Gesenius, * Commentary,' p. 716. 



124 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay ill. 

[the land] for the chvellers in steppes. They erected 
their watch-towers ; they roused up her palaces ; thej 
made her a ruin." Knobel and Gesenius, in the pas- 
sages quoted from their commentaries, plainly admit 
this. But the only siege of Tyre by the Chaldeans 
was the thirteen years' siege by ISTebuchadnezzar, and 
every unprejudiced mind must admit that it alone 
answers to the prophet's words, and therefore receive 
the prophecy as a prediction. Sooner than do this, 
Knobel, who believes and proves the prophecy to be 
genuine, says we must reject it as ungenuine, and 
ascribe it to Jeremiah. *'To assert the genuineness 
of this portion, and yet to refer it to the siege of Tyre by 
!N"ebuchadnezzar the King of the Chaldeans, an event 
which happened a hundred years later, Ezek. xxvi.- 
xxviii. (as Jerome, Yitringa, I. D. Michaelis, Drechsler, 
Hengstenberg), is impossible, because in the time of 
Isaiah there could not be a foreboding, much less a 
certain and definite announcement of anything of the 
kind." Such is the honesty and trustworthiness of 
" the higher criticism." Better to reject a prophetic 
passage, which it proves to be genuine, than admit a 
prediction. Here is a plain proof that the criticism 
proceeds from previous rejection of prediction, not that 
the unbelief proceeds from the criticism. The critical 
De Wette says the same in his Introduction to the O. 
T. "The prophecy concerning Tjre, c. xxiii., has 
been denied to be Isaiah's on account of the mentio.n 
of the Chaldeans, and because it has been supposed 
that its fulfilment must be found in history ; also be- 
cause of the supposed Chaldaising language (verses 3, 
11). But these objections can be some of them entire- 
ly confuted, and others shown to be weak."* The 
preceding statement is a remarkable exhibition of the 
untrust worthiness of Rationalist criticism on account 
of the previous dogmatic prejudices of the authors 
against inspiration and prediction. It is also a speci- 
men, one out of thousands, of how much reliance is to 
be placed on Professor Jowett's statement, " that the 

* This has been done by both Gesenius and Knobel in their commentaries. 



III.] PEOPHEOT. 125 

diversity amongst German writers on prophecy is far 
less than among English ones. That is a new phe- 
nomenon which has to be acknowledged." ^ Any one 
who would take the trouble coukl show that the con- 
trary is the fact ; that there is such a love of novelt}'-, 
and such unrestrained efforts after originality, that the 
diversities of opinion on any one subject, easy or 
difficult, are much greater than in England. 

But to return ; Professor Jowett says that this is 
one of the passages which have not been fulfilled. " For 
a like reason the failure of a prophecy is never admitted, 
in spite of Scripture and of history (Jer. xxxvi. 30 ; 
Isai. xxiii. ; Amos vii. 10-lY)." f What he considers 
unfulfilled in this prediction he does not say ; but there 
are two points to which he probably alludes. The first 
is, that there is no historic account of Tyre having been 
taken by assault by ^Nebuchadnezzar. But no such 
event is predicted in this chapter. The prophet fore- 
tells a siege by the Chaldeans, great calamities. Tyre 
reduced to a ruin — this is all matter of history. Tyre 
was besieged for thirteen years.:}: In so long a siege 
the city must have suflered severely. ^Nebuchadnezzar 
overran all Syria and Phoenicia : § he must, therefore, 
have taken Old Tyre on the continent ; and modern 
critics now admit that if New Tyre on the island was 
not taken by assault, it submitted to the Chaldeans by 
capitulation, and that the Tyrian royal family was car- 
ried to Babylon. So Gesenius says, " The siege proba- 
bly ended with a peaceable agreement and alliance, 
as we see that subsequently the Tyrians sent to Baby- 
lon to fetch Merbal, one of their later kin2;s (Joseph, 
contra Apion. i. § 21)." And Tholuck (p. 133), '' That 
which, after the searching investigations of Hengsten- 
berg and Havernik, should never have been questioned, 
has now, since the farther researches in Movers (ii. 1, -p. 
461), found pretty general reception (also in Duncker, 
i. 172 ; Niebuhr, p. 216) ; that certainly, if not a con- 

* * Essays and Reviews/ p. 340. 

t ' Essays,' p. 343. 

X Josephus, Antiq. lib. x., c. 11. Contra Ap. i. 21. 

§ Contra Apion. lib. i. c. 20. 



126 ^IDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

quest, yet a capitiilation of the Tyiians must have taken 
place, in consequence of which they again became vas- 
sals of the Chaldeans, and were obliged to submit to 
the removal of the royal family to Babylon. The 
plainest proof of this is seen in the fact, that about a 
year later they were attacked as Chaldean vassals and 
subdued by Hophra, who had been formerly their ally. 
That this conquest could have been effected by the 
Egyptian king by a surprise, shows in what a low state 
their fortifications and theii' power must have been." * 
It is therefore historically certain that Tyt-e was be- 
sieged, and reduced to a state of ruin by the Chaldeans, 
just as Isaiah had foretold about a hundred and thirty 
years before, when the Chaldeans were as yet mere 
mercenary troops in the armies of Assyria. It is 
equally certain that after the fall of Babylon, Tyre 
became independent, rich, and prosperous again, as 
the prophet foretold. '- It shall come to pass in that 
day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, ac- 
cording to the days of one king : after the end of sev- 
enty years shall Tyi'e sing as a harlot." The discord 
amongst critics about the meaning of the seventy years 
and the days of one king, is just as great as that already 
noticed. Two opinions meet most favour : one, that 
of the Eationalists, that seventy is a round number, 
and that seventy years mean a long time ; the other, 
that M7ig here means dynasty or Tdngdam of the Chal- 
deans, as Dan. vii. 17, viii. 20, which is the view of 
Aben Ezra, Yitringa, Lowth, Doderlein, Hosenmiiller, 
&c. If either be true, the objector cannot fairly say 
that the prediction has not been fulfilled. 

"With regard to the concluding verse, in which the 
prophet foretells that after Tyre's recovery from Babylo- 
nian vassalage, '' Her merchandize and her hire should be 
holiness to the Lord," the most that can be objected is, 
that we have no record of its fulfilment. But from 
this it does not follow that this part of the prediction 

* That is, to what a state of ruin they had been reduced by the previous 
thirteen years' siege. — See also von Niebuhr's * Geschichte Assur's und Ba- 
bel's,' p. 216. 



Essay III.] PKOPHECY. J27 

was not accomplished. The fnlfihnent could only have 
taken place after the restoration from Babylon, and 
before the destruction by Alexander. The records of 
events in Scripture from the return of Zerubbabel to 
the close of the Canon are too brief too afford us any 
light as to the relations between Tyre and Jerusalem. 
In the days of Solomon we know that they were 
friendly, Hiram contributed to the building of the 
temple, and the friendship must have continued un- 
usually intimate, as Amos denounces punishment upon 
Tyre for " not having remembered the brotherly cove- 
nant." (Amos i. 9.) There is, therefore, nothing im- 
probable in the supposition that, after Tyre's recovery 
from almost ruin, friendly relations were re-established, 
and rich offerings made in the temple at Jerusalem. 
The marvellous fulfilment of the former portion respect- 
ing the Chaldeans is a guarantee for the Divine origin 
and accomplishment of the latter. Hitherto objectors 
have only asserted, not attempted to prove, the non- 
fulfilment. 

There are other fulfilled predictions to which the 
reader's attention might satisfactorily have been turned, 
but the charge of non-fulfilment made in ' Essays and 
Reviews ' constrains us to consider a passage in Jere- 
miah, and another in Amos there referred to, in support 
of the allegation. The former, Jer. xxxvi. 10, is thus 
given in the Authorized Version : — " Therefore thus 
saith the Lord of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, he shall 
have no7ie to sit [literally, ' none sitting ' *] upon the 
throne of David ; and his body shall be cast out in the 
day to the heat, and in the night to the frost." f To. 
this Hitzig in his commentary objects, that Jehoiakim 
had a son, Jehoiachin, who did sit upon his throne, 
and that in 2 Kings xxiv. 6 (Heb. 5), we read, '' So 
Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and Jehoiachin his 

* The present participle iiDli is used to denote continuance. See Ewald, 
Gramm. § 350. 

The verb 'zii'' signifies to abide, contimie, endure, as well as to sit. Gen. 
xxiv. 55 : Ps. ix. 8 ; Jer. xxx, 18. 

t Compare xxii. 19 : " He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn 
and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem." 



128 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IIL 

son reigned in his stead." If Jeremiah had, after utter- 
ing the prophecy, committed it to Trriting, and then 
died before Jehoiakim, this objection might have some 
"weight ; but when it is remembered that Jeremiah 
lived many years after the death of Jehoiakim, and, if 
his words had been falsified by events, might haA^e 
altered them, and yet did not, bnt left them as origi- 
nally nttered, the objection ceases to have any force 
at all. The prophet mnst have been satisfied after the 
event, that his vrords expressed what had happened. 
Jehoiakim had in fact no son " sitting," or continning 
on the throne of David, for three months after Jehoia- 
chin's elevation, he was deposed and carried away. The 
words, ''He slept with his fathers," signify simply that 
he died, afiirming nothing about his bnrial. Here 
Ewald is much more thoughtful and more candid than 
the English Essayist or his German forerunner. In 
the ' Geschichte cles Yolkes Israel,' iii. p. 430, Ewald 
gives an account of the death of Jehoiakim and of the 
treatment of his corpse in agreement with Jeremi all's 
words, and, in a note, adds, "The particular circum- 
stances of the death of Jehoiakim are very obscure. 
The formula, ' He slept with his fathers,' 2 Kings xxiv. 
5, means nothing more than his death ; that he was 
taken prisoner is mentioned, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6 ; but 
what actually occurred may be infeiTed with tolerable 
probability from the words selected by Jeremiah xxii. 
18, &c., and xxxvi. 30. For, though the proj)het had 
certainly predicted the king's unhappy end long be- 
fore, he wrote down the words after the event." Ewald, 
therefore, saw the impossibility of these words contain- 
ing an unfulfilled prediction. The English objector 
might have saved his criticism from appearing as the 
dictate of passion rather than the conclusion of judg- 
ment, had he taken time to consider the prophet's words 
impartially. 

Another example of this unhappy hastiness in tak- 
ing up obj ections is found in the reference to Amos vii. 
10-17. In our English Bible the passage reads thus : — 
" Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam 



Essay III.] PEOPIIECY. 129 

King of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against 
thee in the midst of the house of Israel : the land is 
not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos saith, 
Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall 
sm-ely be led away captive out of their own land. 
And Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go flee 
thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, 
and prophesy there : But prophesy not again any more 
at Bethel ; for it is the king's chapel and the king's 
court." Amos asserts his Divine call, and utters this 
prediction against Amaziah ; — '' Therefore, thus saith 
the Lord ; thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and 
thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and 
thy land shall be divided by line ; and thou shalt die 
in a polluted land ; and Israel shall surely go into cap- 
tivity forth of his land." As the Essayist does not 
specify the particulars which he supposes unfulfilled, 
we can only state the objection according to Hitzig. 
First, then, he may suppose that the prediction is not 
fulfilled because Jeroboam 11. did not die by the sword ; 
but if the objector will look at verse 9, he will see that 
Amos did not predict anything of the kind — the 
prophet's threat is not against Jeroboam, but his 
house. " I will rise against the house of Jeroboam 
with the sword," which threat was fulfilled when 
Shallum conspired against Jeroboam's son and suc- 
cessor, and slew him and reigned in his stead. (2 
Kings XV. 10.) The words, " Jeroboam shall die by 
the sword," were a malicious addition of Amaziah's 
to induce Jeroboam to drive Amos from Bethel. Hit- 
zig's attempt to prove that " house of Jeroboam " in- 
cluded Jeroboam himself by referring to Isai. vii. 13, 
where " house of David " includes Ahaz and his family, 
is a miserable failure. To make the cases parallel, 
Isaiah must have said, " Hear ye now, O house of 
Ahaz." 

The next portion of the assaulted prediction foretells 
that Israel should go into captivity. Taking Knobel's 
dates, Amos uttered his prophecies between 790-784 
B. c, i. e. before the death of Jeroboam. The final car- 



130 ^^^S ^^ FAITH, [Essay III. 

rying away of Israel by Shalmaneser occurred about 
sixty years after : so that here is an undoubted predic- 
tion undoubtedly fulfilled. 

There remains only the denunciation against Am- 
aziah, his "^ife and children, the fulfilment of which is 
not recorded. But surely this is not surprising, when 
the excessive brevity of the accounts of the kings and 
revolutions that followed, is taken into consideration. 
There is nothing impossible or improbable in the fate 
predicted. Within thirty years from the date of the 
prophecy, the Assyrians began their incursions into the 
land of Israel. Although, then, the fulfilment of this 
particular is not related, it is not improbable. The ful- 
filment of the other two particulars is a guarantee that 
this also was accomplished. This objection, however, 
like others of the kind, has this value : it shows that 
the objector believes that the Hebrew prophets did lay 
claim to the power of predicting future events. 

11. Here our attention has been directed to one of 
many wondrous predictions concerning the destinies of 
Israel, which have excited the astonishment of readers 
in all ages. Moses foretold the dispersion of the dis- 
obedient people, and their preservation in the midst of 
the nations. The theme has been taken up by all the 
later prophets. The fulfilment is before our eyes. Is- 
rael has been scattered to the four winds, but is still 
preserved. Of the nations by whom and amongst 
whom they were first dispersed the Lord has made a 
full end. He has chastened Israel in measure, but has 
not permitted them to disappear." The Assyrians, the 
Babylonians, the Romans have utterly perished. The 
Ten "^Tribes are "wanderers among the nations." The 
people of the Jews, rich, powerful, intelligent, survive 
all the revolutions of Empires, ancient, medieval, mod- 
ern, and await the consummation of the Lord's oracles. f 
But as this is matter of notoriety, is not disputed or 
explained by Rationalists or Essayists, it is enough to 
refer to this proof of revelation, as wonderful as the 
answer to Elijah's prayer (1 Kings, xviii.). 

* Jer. XXX. 11, xxxi. 35-57 ; Isai. vi. 11-13 ; Amos ix. 9. 
t See Butler's ' Analogy,' Part ii, c. 7. 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. jgj 

12. But that wliicli gives to Hebrew propliecj^ its 
peculiar cliarm, and its paramount importance, is that 
it contains predictions respecting Redemption and 
the Redeemer. That there are Messianic prophecies 
has been the belief of Jews and Christians for more 
than two thousand years, and is fully admitted by the 
N'ew School of Theology. But, much beyond this, the 
agreement between the old and new interpreters does 
not extend. For some of the prophecies applied in the 
New Testament to the Messiah, the modern school has 
new interpretations. Of others, and those most im- 
portant, it denies the genuineness ; and one of the vital 
questions now brought before the English mind is, 
whether w^e are to follow the ISTew Testament, or the 
new German critics. The innovators in England do 
not pretend to offer anything original of their own. 
They repeat in English what they have derived from 
one class of German writers. And, as German learn- 
ing stands deservedly in high repute, there is a danger 
of the unwary receiving without question, what ap- 
pears to come on authority so respectable. Hence the 
present necessity of such frequent references to the 
sources from which they draw, and also of recalling 
attention to the real question at issue, namely, whether 
the l^ew Testament or German critics are to be our 
guides in interpreting prophecy.- Now, placing for a 
moment the New Testament writers on the lowest level, 
regarding them merely as included amongst the ancient 
Jews, their opinion must be of some value. Theirs 
w^ere the prophetic books. For their fathers and for 
themselves they were written. They were orientals. 
They inherited the traditional interpretation of their 
people. Their interpretation has been accepted by the 
intelligent of other nations. The Christian Church, 
composed of a great variety of races, abounding in 
minds of all possible types, in different stages of cul- 
ture, approved and adhered to the old Jewish interpre- 
tation for many centuries. True, that only two or three 
of the Fathers understood Hebrew, and that the early 
Church was dependent upon the Greek and Syriac, and 



232 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay IIL 

tlie medieyal Clmrcli on the Yiilgate, versions. But, 
as was said above, and at the present time onght to be 
kept in remembrance, however many of the beauties 
and peculiarities of the writer maybe lost in a version, 
the grand substance, the purpose and intent of the 
Avhole, which is, after all, the real meaning of any book 
that has a meaning, may be grasped in any tolerable 
translation by any intelligent reader. And that which 
suggests itself to the common sense of mankind, as the 
meaning, whether derived from version or original, is 
undoubtedly the true meaning. And so it is with proph- 
ecy. To readers of ancient or modern versions, or of 
the original, the general scope and intent has ever 
appeared the same. And, therefore, at the revival of 
letters, and at the Reformation, when the original lan- 
guage of the prophets came to be studied, the general 
sense, handed down from the Xew Testament writers 
by the Fathers and medieval divines, still commended 
itself to students as acute in intellect, and to scholars as 
familiar with the Hebrew language, as any who have 
lived in the last hundi'ed years. Indeed it may be 
doubted whether Hebrew has been so nearly a mother- 
tongue with any recent critics, as it was with the 
Buxtorfs, Wagenseil, Edzard, and others of old ; and 
whether any modern commentators have been natural- 
ly more competent to grasp the general sense than the 
Eeformers, and those who followed them. And yet, 
from the Eefonnation down to the last cjuarter of the 
eighteenth centuiy, the old interpretation prevailed. 
Bomanists and Protestants were still of one mind as to 
the general outline of prophetic truth. Wonderfnlif 
ancient Jews, Bathers and Medievalists, Protestants 
and Bomanists, were all mistaken, and the true sense 
hidden until about fifty years ago. 

13. If the Xew School were all of one mind ; if all 
modern critics were unanimous in their judgments, and 
uniform in their interpretations, and their conclusions 
had been arrived at by unbiassed investigation, such 
unanimity of opinion, and conclusions so deduced, 
would natm-ally have great weight. But the variety 



Essay III.] PEOPHEOY. I33 

and diversity of opinion in the German Rationalist 
School is unbounded. They agree only in that negative 
view, which necessarily arises from the common origin 
and the common principles of their theology. The 
origin of their theology is undoubtedly Deistic infidel- 
ity ;^ its fundamental principles, that there is no super- 
natural revelation of Deity, and therefore no Divine 
prediction, f consequently that there can be no real 
predictions concerning Jesus of [N'azareth, or anybody 
else.ij: Criticism derived from such a source, and guid- 
ed by such principles, must be eminently untrustwor- 
thy. The conclusions forerun the investigation. If 
there can be no prediction at all, then there can be 
none relating to our Lord ; and therefore from their 
general principle, before any investigation is made, it fol- 
lows that neither the xxiind Psalm, nor Isai. vii. 14, nor 
any other Psalm or prophecy, can be interpreted of 
the Saviour, and therefore investigation can only be 
naade in order to show that the foregone conclusion is 
true. The investigators may be learned, profound, 
acute, diligent, honest, but their principles hinder them 
from acknowledging that any prediction ever was or 
can be fulfilled, and compel them to conclude that it is 
not ; and therefore their criticism and conclusions in 
such matters must be regarded not only with suspicion, 
but as probably untrue, the result of their dogmatic 
prejudices, and therefore utterly insufficient to out- 
weigh the common judgment of Jews and Gentiles for 
more than two thousand years. 

14. Such would be the opinion of the student who 
had never heard of Evangelists, Apostles, or Rationalists 
in his life, but considered the subject, apart from all 
religious interests, merely in a scientific point of view. 

* See *■ Letters on Rationalism,' passim. 

t At vero quibus miraculorum auctoritas implicita est scrupulis, iisdem 
vel gravioribus etiam decreta de vaticiniis pi'oposita premuntur. Primiim 
enim qusevis predictio divinitus patefacta, qua fatum inevitabile hominis aut 
populi cujusdam, quod ex re quadam ab ipsis perpetranda peudet, diserte 
nunciatur, ideae Dei sanctissimi et benignissimi repugnat, fatalismuvi fovet 
et libertatem hominum moralem tollit. — Wegscheider, Instituiiones, p. 217. 

X "So muss wohl zugegeben werden, dass ein Erweis Christi als Erlosers 
aus den Weissagungen uumoglich ist." — Schleiermacher, Der Cliristliche 
Glauhe, i. 2, a. 105. 



134 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

But in the question LetAveen tlie E"ew Testament and 
modern criticism the Christian sees something more 
than an alternative between ancient Jndaism and mod- 
ern heathenism — he sees that it is an ahernative be- 
tween Christ and unbelief. The interpretations of the 
!N^ew Testament are the interpretations of Christ and of 
those to whom, "beginning at Moses, and all the proph- 
ets, he expounded in all the Scriptures the things 
concerning himself" (Luke xxiv. 27), "whose under- 
standings He opened that thej might understand the 
Scriptures " (Luke xxiv. 45) ; to whom He sent His 
Holy Spirit to " bring all things to their remembrance 
whatsoever He had said unto them," and to "guide 
them into all truth." (John xiv. 26, xvi. 13.) He can- 
not depart from their interpretations, and adopt the 
new and contradictory criticism, without admitting 
either that Christ knowingly accommodated Himself to 
the errors of the times, or that He was mistaken, or 
that His discourses have been incorrectly reported; any 
one of which admissions is equivalent to a renunciation 
of Christianity. The first is the supposition of some of 
the elder Rationalists, the second of some of the later, 
and the third apparently of many modern critics. To 
admit the first is to deny our Lord's integrity, to con- 
cede the second is to make him a mere fallible man, 
and to receive the third is to take away the main 
ground of our faith in Christ. The lowest theory of in- 
spiration, at all comdatible with faith, is that "it pro- 
tects the doctrine." Our Lord's doctrine is contained 
in His discourses, and part of those discourses is His 
interpretation of prophecy, and the promise of the 
Holy Spirit to guide His disciples. If in those dis- 
courses, or those of His disciples, the prophecies are 
falsely interpreted, the doctrine is not protected, the 
promise of the Spirit cannot have been fulfilled, and we 
are brought to the horrid and blasphemous conclusion 
that Christ, " The "Way, the Truth, and the Life," was 
fallible, and that His word is not to be depended upon. 
From these consistent and necessary conclusions the 
Essayists do not shrink any more than their German 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. I35 

masters. They reject the New Testament interpretation 
of prophecy, and then consistently deny the authority 
of the New Testament itself. He who w^ould sweep 
away all predictive prophecy insinuates that the Gospel 
portrait of our Lord is dimmed " by the haze of mingled 
imagination and remembrance, with which his awful 
figure could scarcely fail to be at length invested by 
affection." * Another says that " The New Testament 
writings leave us in uncertainty as to the descent of 
Jesus Christ according to the flesh, wdiether by His 
mother He were of the tribe of Judah, or of the tribe 
of Levi ; "f implies that His birth at Bethlehem and 
the announcement of it by the Angels are doubtful ; 
and that the three first Gospels, though more trust- 
worthy than the fourth, contain only " more exact tra- 
ditions of what he actually said." A third, who, fol- 
lowing Reimarus, J doubts whether any one passage 
from the Psalms or Prophets quoted in the Epistles is 
rightly interpreted, § insinuates that our Lord's pre- 
diction concerning the day of judgment has failed 
because it is inseparable from that of the .destruction of 
Jerusalem, and in another work expressly teaches that 
in this matter our Lord was mistaken. || Thus the ex- 
ample of foreign critics and their followers at home 
warns us that if we give up the prophetic interpretations 
of Christ and the Apostles, w^e must prepare also to part 
with our Christianity, and begin a painful and not very 
profitable search for those crumbs of Divine truth, 
which these kind critics still suppose to be scattered 
about in the Prophets and Evangelists, and which can 
only be recognized by the verifying faculty of the critic. 
But if we believe in Christ, and those whom He taught 
by His Spirit, we must take their principle of inter- 
pretation as ours, and rest assured that the interpreta- 
tions which they have given exhibit the true mind of 
that Spirit who spake by the prophets. The wise men, 
and the scribes, and the disputers of the day may decry 

* * Essays and Reviews,' p. 80. t Ibid., pp. 180, 203. 

X Wolfenbiittel, ' Fragments,' § 84-45. § Page 406- 

Jl See Professor Jowett's ' Commentarjr to the First Epistle to the Thessa- 
lonians,' p. 108-111. 



136 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IIL 

tliis principle as unscientific, and protest that it is better 
not to read the Bible at all, than to read with such re- 
strictions ; but Christians may be content with the 
"wisdom that came down from above, and with the 
liberty wherewith Christ has made them free. Where 
our Lord or an inspired Apostle has spoken, we abide 
by the interpretation. 

15. Here, however, it is necessary to guard against 
mistake. "Where passages of the prophecies are cited 
or applied, attention must be paid to the mind and in- 
tention of the speaker or writer, as sometimes Old 
Testament language is used without any intention of 
intimating a fulfilment of prophecy either direct or 
typical. The words were suitable to express the feel- 
ings or thoughts of the writer, and they were adoj)ted. 
Thus when St. Paul savs, "I say, have they not heard? 
Yes, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and 
their words unto the end of the world," there is no 
reason for supposing that the Apostle looked upon 
Ps. xix. 4 as a prophecy fulfilled in the preaching of 
the Gospel. The Psalm speaks of the heavens and the 
firmament. But the words aptly and beautifully ex- 
pressed what the disciples of Christ had already done, 
and Paul was guided to adopt them, the rather because 
in the Psalm itself the parallel is drawn between the 
book of nature and the book of revelation, the har- 
monious testimony of the works and word of God. An- 
other instance occurs 1 Cor. xv. 32: "If the dead rise 
not, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Here 
is a quotation from Isai. xxii. 13. The words of the 
prophet forcibly depicted the character of those of 
whom the Apostle was speaking, and they are adopted 
accordingly. This principle is demonstrated by 2 Tim. 
ii. 19 : " The foundation of God standeth sure, having 
this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his." The 
latter words are a quotation from E'umb. xvi. 5, refer- 
ring to the rebellion of Korah and his company, but 
adoj^ted by the Apostle, just as the later prophets, es- 
pecially Jeremiah, express their message occasionally 
in citations from their predecessors or from the Pen- 
tateuch, 



Essay III.] PEOPIIECY. 13*7 

In tlie next place, it is to be observed that Old Testa- 
ment passages are sometimes cited simply to confirm a 
doctrine, or to form the foundation of an argument; as" 
when the Apostle says (Rom. ix. 7), "Neither because 
they are seed of Abraham, are they all children : but 
in Isaac shall th}'' seed be called." The latter words are 
cited to prove that mere fleshly descent does not con- 
stitute a right to the inheritance or God's favour. Ish- 
mael was according to the flesh the child of Abraham, 
but it was to Isaac and his posterity that the inheritance 
of the promises was given. In like manner our Lord 
(Matt. xiii. 14) applies Isai. vi. 9, 10 to the Jews whom 
He addressed, and St. Paul applies the same words 
(Acts xxviii. 26) to the Jews at Rome. They contain 
a general principle of God's dealings with men, appli- 
cable at all times. So St. Paul (Rom. x. 12) employs 
the words of Joel, "Whosoever shall call upon the 
name of the Lord shall be saved," to prove that there 
is no difference between the Jew and the Gentile. The 
stress is upon the words Tra? ^ap o? [^t;i< h'z] "every 
one." Not to the Jews only, but to every one who calls 
upon the name of the Lord, God promises salvation, 
therefore there is no difference, &c. The object for 
which the quotation is made must be kej)t in view, else 
the conclusiveness of the argument will be missed, and 
a wrong interpretation given to the prophecy. As for 
example (Acts xv. 15 — 17), where James proves the 
right of the Gentiles to be received into the Church 
without circumcision, he says, " Simeon hath declared 
how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out 
of them a people for His name. And to this agree the 
words of the prophets ; as it is written, After this I will 
return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, 
which is fallen down . . . that the residue of men* 
might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles on whom 
my name is called, saith the Lord." Some readers and 
interj)reters fix their eye upon the tabernacle of David, 
and seeing that that was not literally fulfilled, take it 
figuratively of the Christian Church, and thereby do 

* Amos, ix. 11, 12. 



138 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

violence to the ^vords of the prophecy, and at the same 
time miss St. James's argument. The question was, 
•whether the Gentiles, i.e. without circumcision and 
obedience to the Mosaic Law, could be received into 
the Christian Church. The maj oritj of Jewish Chris- 
tians thought that they could not. St. Peter proved 
that these persons were wrong by an appeal to fact. 
St. James shows the same by a reference to prophecy. 
His object was not to quote and show a fulfilment of 
one prediction, but the general tenour of all respecting 
the call of the Gentiles as such, and therefore he says 
in the plural, "To this agree the words of the prophets." 
At the same time he selects one, in which the Gentiles 
[c^i3, eOvrf] are mentioned by name with the addition 
'' all," ''all nations," and where it is said that the name 
of the Lord is called upon them. The stress of the 
argument rests upon the word " Gentiles," and upon the 
fact that God's name is called upon them ; as if he 
would say, '^ Here in Amos men upon whom the Lord's 
name is called are still spoken of as Gentiles ; they can- 
not therefore be persons circumcised and keeping the 
Law, and therefore the name of the Lord may now also 
be called upon Gentiles as such, and therefore there is 
no necessity for circumcising them. To enter the 
Church of Christ it is not necessary that they should 
cease to be Gentiles, or become proselytes by circum- 
cision." ^ 

16. In the next place words are quoted from the 
prophets, which contain no prediction at all, and are 
yet spoken of as being fulfilled, because the event to 
which they allude was a type of that to which they are 
applied. Our Lord and, after Him, the Apostles, lay 
down the principle that past history may represent 
that which is to happen liereafter. Thus the Saviour 
refers to the brazen serpent, and to Jonah as prefigur- 
ing His resurrection, and even the time of it on the 
third day. St. Paul teaches that Hagar and Sarah are 

* The account of this dispute is a strong testimony to the credibility, 
knowledge, and good faith of the writer. The Pharisees believed that pros- 
elytes oflhe gate, i.e. proselytes without circumcision, could only be received 
when all the twelve tribes were in the land. 



Essay III.] PEOPHEUY. I39 

typical of the covenants ; the Paschal lamb of Christ's 
atoning death ; the passage of the Red Sea of baptism ; 
the smitten rock of Christ. The author of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, St. Peter in his allusion to the dehige, 
and St. John in his mystical application of the names 
Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon, confirm the principle, 
which helps us to interpret passages of the Old Testa- 
ment, such as those where the Messiah is called David, 
and to understand passages of the New Testament, 
where what was spoken of David is applied to our 
Lord. The principle also solves the apparent difficulty 
of two passages strongly insisted upon by the enemies 
of Christianity. Concerning our Lord's early sojourn 
in Egypt, St. Matthew says, that it happened " that it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the 
prophet, saying. Out of Egypt have I called my Son," 
— and respecting the slaugliter of the children at Beth- 
lehem, " Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by 
Jeremy the prophet, saying. In Rama was a voice 
heard." In neither case does St. Matthew quote pre- 
dictions, but Hosea's and Jeremiah's references to past 
history. When Ilosea said, "Out of Egypt have I 
called my son," or when Jeremiah spoke of Rachel 
weeping for her children, neither was uttering a pre- 
diction of the future, but alluding to facts long past. 
Hosea was alluding to the Exodus eight centuries be- 
fore, and Jeremiah to the carrying away of the Ten 
Tribes one hundred years before he wrote. St. Mat- 
tliew therefore speaks of them as fulfilled in the only 
way in wliich facts' can be fulfilled, in events the anti- 
types of those referred to. 

17. But after making allowance for these and numer- 
ous other similar applications of prophecy, there re- 
main many which the Lord and the Apostles interpret 
as specially spoken in reference to Christ and Christi- 
anity. It has ever been the belief of all orthodox 
writers that Christ claimed to be the Messiah foretold 
by the prophets. It is also acknowledged by Ration- 
alist divines. Thus Yon Colin says that the sick who 
had been healed, the common people, his own imme-- 



140 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

diate adherents, acknowledged Him as the Messiah, 
and adds, ''That Jesiis approved, and even called forth 
this view of Himself, is evident from His words and 
His conduct. 1st. From His answer to Peter [Matt, 
xvi. 17) ; His approval of the acclamations of the peo- 
ple (Lnke xix. 31, 40 ; Matt, xxi. 15, 16). 2nd. From 
His assuming the names belonging to the Messiah, 
especially the titles Son of God and Son of Man from 
Dan. vii. 13, 14. 3rd. From His claiming the privi- 
leges attributed to the Messiah, as the full unfolding 
and explanation of the Law (Matt. v. 17) ; the asser- 
tion that He was Lord of the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 8); 
His reformation of the temple service (John ii. 13, 20); 
His dispensation of His disciples from the usual fasts 
(Matt. ix. 14) ; and His claiming the right to forgive 
sins. 4th. From His express declaration that He was 
the Messiah (John iv. 25, 26 ; xvii. 3 ; Matt. xxvi. 63, 
64, &c). — This his- assertion that He was sent from 
God, as the founder of a new theocracy, Jesus proved 
to be true^l, From the Holy ScrijDtures of His people, 
which bare witness of His person and His works. 
According to the general convictions, the Law and the 
Prophets spake of an ideal theocracy. There was an 
unanimity of opinion as to the passages which treated 
of the ideal King, and also as to the particular features 
of his character as drawn [by the prophets]. "Whoso- 
ever, therefore, gave himself out for the Messiah, was 
under the necessity of 2:»roving that these features were 
found in him. Jesus, therefore, often employed the 
declarations of the Law and the Prophets to convince 
the Jews that He was the Messiah. . . . The application 
of the proj^hetic passages to Himself cannot be ex- 
plained as accommodation, as Jesus in the circle of 
His confidential disciples, and after Him the Apostles 
in their discourses and Epistles, adhere to this applica- 
tion." '^'^ The same author teaches elsewhere (p. 89) 
that our Lord received the Law and the Prophets as 

* Von Colin, ' Biblische Theologie,' ii. p. 116-18, and 89 ; comp. Weg- 
scheider, ' Institutiones,' § 119, especially iVoife C. ; Knobel, ' Prophetism,' i. 
838 ; De Wette, ' Biblische Dogmatik,' § 189. 



Essay III.] PEOPHEOT. 141 

the inspired word of God, and " employed the prophetic 
oracles in these writings as testimonies to His own ap- 
pearance and works (John v. 39, 46 ; Luke iv. 21). He 
pointed out especially and often that His sufferings 
must happen according to the announcements of these 
Holy Books, and were therefore inevitable ordinances 
of God: Matt. xxvi. 24; Mark ix. 12, xiv. 49; Luke 
xviii. 31-33, xxii. 37, xxiv. 26, 27." 

18. I^ow the two prophets to whose writings our 
Lord and the Apostles most emphatically refer are 
Daniel and Isaiah ; and by their references they not 
only interpret particular passages, but establish the 
genuineness of the books. Our Lord not only cites the 
prophet Daniel by name, when speaking of " the abom- 
ination of desolation" (Matt. xxiv. 15), but has been 
pleased to adopt from that book the designation of His 
kingdom, and the title which He appropriates to Him- 
self. The expressions "Kingdom of Heaven," and 
" Son of Man," are confessedly taken from the second 
and seventh chapters of Daniel. The latter expression 
is particularly important. Meyer says — "Its simple 
meaning is. The 3Iessiah. It is derived from the awful 
and striking representation in the prophetic vision 
(Dan. vii. 13) so well known to the Jews, and occur- 
ring also in the ]3re-Christian book of Enoch, in which 
the Messiah appears in the clouds of heaven, as 'The 
Son of Man' (&>? vm dvOpcoTrov), surrounded by the 
angels of the Divine throne of judgment (see Ewald, 
' Gesch. Chr.,' p. 79), that is, in a form nothing differ- 
ent from that of an ordinary man. Jesus, inasmuch as 
in Him the Messiah was come, was, in the realisation, 
that Son of Man whose form was seen in Daniel's vis- 
ion. As often, therefore, as Jesus in His discourses 
says 'The Son of Man,' he means 'The Son of Man of 
that vision of Daniel,' that is. The Messiah."* It is 

* H. A_. W. Meyer's * Comm. on Matt. viii. 20.' Fleck also says : ' Denota- 
tur enim is, qtiem omnes norunt, qui omnium ore fertw {sewiw. eximio ita 
vocatus) films hominis DanieUticus=Mess,iasJ' * De Regno Divino,' p. 121. 
The italics are Fleck's. He also refers to the RabbisrWetstein, Grotius, 
Lampe, Stahl, Kuinoel, Lucke, Tholuck. See also the references given above 
to Von Colin, Wegscheider, De Wette, Knobel. 



I 



142 ■^^'^^ TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

needless to say liow often this expression occurs in all 
the GosjDels in our Lord's disconrses, especially on the 
most solemn occasions, as when He describes His 
second advent (Matt. xiii. 41, xxiv. 27, 30, 44, xxy. 31); 
when He speaks of His passion (John iii. 13, 14) on the 
very eve of its accomplishment (Matt. xxvi. 24) ; and 
when, after formal adjuration, He declares Himself the 
Christ, the Son of God, " Hereafter shall ye see the 
Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and 
coming in the clouds of heaven ;" so that it is impossi- 
ble to separate the essential elements of Christ's teach- 
ing from the book of Daniel, and equally imj)0ssible to 
suppose that He who came into the world to bear wit- 
ness to the truth would ground His claims and His 
most solemn doctrine on a forgery. The question of 
the genuineness and authenticity of Daniel cannot, 
therefore, be separated from that respecting the falli- 
bility or infallibility of the Saviour. By asserting that 
the book of Daniel is ungenuine — a forged and false 
prophecy — men charge our Lord with the uncritical 
ignorance of His times, or a deliberate application of 
a document which He knew to be false. But the stu- 
dent need not be alarmed at the greatness of the issue. 
He must remember that the original assault on Daniel 
was made by the heathen Porphyry, an able hut bitter 
enemy of Christianity in the third century, and is con- 
tinued, partly in the original form of objection, by 
those who deny all supernatural revelation, make our 
Lord himself a mere man, and are as opposed to the 
doctrine of Christ's proper Deity as Porphyry himself. 
It must never be forgotten by those who read Eation- 
alist books, that even when, like Schleiermacher and 
his school, they use the expression '* Son of God," they 
use it in a non-natural sense, rejecting the accounts of 
His su]3ernatural birth, and regarding Him as the Son 
of Joseph and Mary.^ They are interested, therefore, 
not only in getting rid of the predictions in Daniel, 
especially such an one as the seventy weeks, but also 

* Compare 'Essays and Reviews,' pp. 82, 88, 89, 202, 203, 851, 352, 354, 
355 ; and Schleiermacher's ' Glaubenslehre,' Srd edit., pp. 64^69. 



Essay III.] PEOPHEOT. I43 

in setting aside a remarkable testimony to the Old 
Testament doctrine of the Deity of Messiah. The two 
main Rationalist arguments against tlie book of Daniel 
are — first, that in their opinion it contains accurate pre- 
dictions concerning Antiochus Epiphanes, which the}^ 
borrow from Porphyry ; and secondly, that it relates 
miracles, and therefore according to their own system 
cannot be true. This is strongly urged by Knobel. 
" The history of Daniel," he says, " has a legendary, 
almost a fairy-tale complexion, and represents the 
events in a manner in which they could not possibly 
have happened. They could have assumed this form 
only after a long oral transmission. For in Hebrew 
history, where numerous myths and legends occur, as, 
for example, in that of the patriarchs, of Moses, Ba- 
laam, Samson, Elijah, Elisha, the narratives were com- 
mitted to writing a considerable time after the events ; 
when, on the contrary, events have a natural appear- 
ance, as in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, -the first of 
Maccabees, there they were generally committed to 
writing at the time, or very soon after the events. This 
is an historic canon, of the validity of which there can 
be no doubt."'^ 

To men holding such axioms of criticism, the book 
of Daniel must, as a matter of course, be as ungenuine 
as the narrative of our Lord's miracles. Criticisms, 
therefore, foimded on such principles must always ap- 
pear questionable to a thoughtful inquirer, even if he 
is not able to show their weakness or falsehood. The 
believer in the Gospels will feel assured that they are 
not unanswerable, and a little inquiry will satisfy him 
that they have been answered again and again, by 
scholars trained in the schools of modern German phi- 
lology and criticism, and every way equal to the task. 
Within the last thirty years, Hengstenberg, Sack, 
Havernik, Eeichel, Schulze, Herbst, Yaihinger, Delitsch, 
Oeler, Auberlen, Ziindel, have stood forward as suc- 
cessful vindicators of the genuineness of Daniel's proph- 
ecies. Kurz, Keil, v. Hoffmann, Drechsel, Baum- 

* 'Prophetismus,' ii. 401. 



t 



144 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

garten have also confessed tlieir adhesion to the ancient 
faith/'^ A defender of the accnracy of Daniel's chrono- 
logical statements has appeared in Parens vonNiebuhr, 
in his History of Assyria and Babylon. These writers 
show, one or other of them, that those interpreters who 
would make the seyenty weeks end with Antiochiis 
Epiphanes contradict and confute one another; that 
that period mnst begin at the going forth of the decree 
to rebuild Jerusalem, and must extend to the times of 
our Lord ; that from the necessary and proved relations 
between chapters ix. and xi., the latter looks far beyond 
the days of Antiochus. They have answered the objec- 
tions from the length of Daniel's life, from supposed 
contradictions, from history, from dates. They have 
proved that some of the supposed Grsecisms are not 
Grsecisms at all ; that others were naturalised in the 
time of Daniel, the Greeks having had relations long 
before with the Assyrians ; and, above all, that the 
Canon of the Old Testament was closed within one 
hundred years of the restoration of the Jewish State, and 
the book of Daniel, if not written before, could not 
have been admitted into it; that therefore the book 
of Daniel is both genuine and authentic, f 

19. The other j^rophecy, whose genuineness Rational- 
ist criticism has specially delighted to dispute, is that 
which is also specially vouched for by the jSTew Testa- 
ment, namely, that contained in the latter part of 
Isaiah (chapters xl. — Ixvi.) and which seems really the 
connecting link between Old and J^ew Testament reve- 
lation. It is a singular coincidence that those portions 
of the Old Testament which are most essential to Isew 
Testament theology — as the Pentateuch, the book of 
Daniel, and the latter part of Isaiah — are just those 
parts which Rationalist criticism has selected as the 
favonrite fields on which to display its skill. Those 
Messianic predictions, which it can explain with plausi- 
bility as expressing Jewish hopes of earthly grandeur 
and prosperity, and incoaipatible with the teaching of 

* Compare Auberleu's ' Der Prophet Daniel,' pp. 164-177. 

t Compare what Bishop Butler has said: 'Analogy,' p. ii. c. vii. 3= 



Essay III.] PEOPHECY. I45 

Christ, it pronounces to be genuine. The prophecies 
which represent the Son of Man as a heavenly jnclge, 
coming in the clouds of heaven (Dan. vii.) ; the Mes- 
siah as cut off (Dan. ix.) ; Sion's King as meek and 
lowly, and riding upon an ass (Zech. ix.) ; the good 
shepherd, sold for thirty pieces of silver (Zech. xi.) ; 
pierced by the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Zech. xii. 10, 
xiii.); despised and rejected of men, cut off out of the 
land of the living, one upon whom the Lord hath laid 
the iniquities of us all (Isaiah liii.) — are just the pre- 
dictions which it proves to be ungenuine. The book 
of Daniel, the latter half of Zechariah, and the conclu- 
sion of Isaiah, which, if genuine, are fatal to Rationalist 
theology, are by Rationalist criticism condemned as 
ungenuine, in direct opposition to the teaching of the 
New Testament. The quotations from Zechariah are 
well known, the determination of our Lord to fulfil the 
ninth chapter of that prophecy obvious in the Gospels. 
The condemned portion of Isaiah is also emphatically 
honoured by the Lord and His Apostles. From the 
beginning to the end it is quoted as the work of Isaiah, 
and as fulfilled in our Lord. John the Baptist begins 
the interpretation with the opening prediction (Isaiah 
xl.) by declaring, " I am the voice of one crying in the 
wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as said 
the prophet Esaias" (John i. 23). Matthew xii. 17 — 21 
explains Isaiah xlii. 1 — 3 of our Lord, and as the proph- 
ecy of Isaiah. The corresponding passage (xlix. 6) 
respecting the Lord's righteous servant is interpreted 
by St. Paul of the call of the Gentiles (Acts xiii. 47). 
The fifty-third chapter is appropriated by our Lord 
Himself (Luke xxii. 37) ; and, after Him, explained by 
Philip (Acts viii.) ; by St. Peter (1 Epist. ii. 24, 25) ; 
and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 28) of the sacrifice 
of Christ. Chapter Ixi. 1 is also interpreted by our Lord 
of Himself (Luke iv. 17 — 21) ; and the end of the proph- 
ecy (Ixv. 1) is in the Epistle to the Romans (x. 20, 
21) expounded of the conversion of the Gentiles, and 
the unbelief of the Jewish people. Thus the whole of 
the prophecy, from the beginning to the end, is in the 
1 



146 ^1^9 TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

!N"ew Testament ascribed to Isaiah as the writer, and 
cited as being fulfilled in our Lord, His sufferings, and 
His salvation. Both statements are denied by Rational- 
ist writers, so that we cannot follow the latter without 
rejecting the teaching of the Lord and His Apostles, 
and the common belief of the Christian Church and the 
Jewish nation for nearly 1800 years. With regard to 
the authorship of this portion of Isaiah, there was dur- 
ing that long period only one opinion. One solitary 
rabbi in the twelfth century suggested a doubt on the 
subject, but, with the exception of Sj^inoza, was not 
followed by either Jews or Christians. It was not until 
men had ceased to believe in Christ that they began to 
question the latter prophecy of Isaiah. The Buxtorfs, 
the Carpzovs, Glassius, Gussetius, Cocceius, Yenema, 
Yitringa, Schultens, Danz, the Michaelis, acquiesced 
in the judgment of antiquity. Even Paulus says that 
the diction is as pure as in the other parts' of Isaiah. 
Eichhorn adduced no instances of later language. 
Bertholdt confesses that there are no traces of later 
usage. The first, and the great objection still, is that 
Cyrus is mentioned by name. When men came to 
teach either that God could not know beforehand the 
name of one of His creatures, or if He could, could not 
or would not communicate it before the existence of 
that creature, they necessarily thought that the predic- 
tion concerning the conqueror of Babylon must have 
been written after his appearance. The denial of the 
genuineness came first, the criticism came after, similar 
to that famous course of law which first condemned and 
executed, and afterwards proceeded to trial. Yet the 
process has led to beneficial results. The Rationalist 
dogmatic criticism has been subjected to a thorough 
examination by Hengstenberg, Havernik, Klein ert, 
Drechsler, Keil, and others. The objections have been 
fairly met, and the claims of Isaiah to the latter chap- 
ters vindicated on various grounds, as, for example, the 
plain references to those chapters in the books of J^a- 
hum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jeremiah ; the circum- 
stances of the times described, so exactly agreeing to 



Essay III. J PEOPHECY. 14 Y 

the days of Isaiah, not to the close of the exile ; the 
historical relations; the similarity of style and man- 
ner — the peculiarities of diction ; the entire tone and 
colouring, not to mention other evidences external and 
internal. Indeed, Ewald and Bleek have made a fatal 
rent in the adverse criticism by confessing that the 
passage Ivi. 9 — Ivii. 11, was written before the exile. 
"This passage," they say, "may be received with the 
highest probability as a prophetic oracle, uttered before 
the exile, perhaps by Isaiah himself; more probably 
not long before the exile, certainly at a time when the 
Jewish State still existed, as it is only on this supposi- 
tion that the contents and composition can be under- 
stood."* 

20. Even that chapter which invests the controversy 
with its chief interest (liii. 1 — 12) is supposed by Ewald 
to be the work of a prophet anterior to the author of 
the other chapters', and, referring to the strong traits of 
personal individuality, not personification, especially 
in verse 8, he says — " The helief of ajter times^ that 
the historic Messiah is here to he founds lay certainly 
very near at hand^^ Indeed the prophetic picture of 
the sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth is so lifelike, that 
when it has been for the first time brought before Jews 
ignorant of the passage, they have affirmed that the 
chapter has been inserted in the Christian editions of 
the Hebrew Bible ; whilst others, not a few, have been 
brought by it to faith in Christ. It is not, therefore, to 
be wondered at that for more than seventeen centuries 
the Christian Church received the prophecy as genuine ; 
and that the Fathers, the medieval writers, the Eeform- 
ers, Protestants and Romanists after the Reformation, 
with the one exception of Grotius, interpreted it of our 
Lord, until Deistic infidelity found its way into the 
hearts and minds of so-called Christian divines, and the 
necessities of the new theology imperatively demanded 
a new interpretation. First IS'eology and then Ration- 

* Bleek, * Einleituug,' p. 456 ; Ewald, * Propheten des alten Bundes,' pp. 
407, 8. 

t Ibid, in the note. 



148 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

alism set to work, and the result is a curious specimen 
of the alleged agreement of modern German expositors 
of prophecy. Here is one of the most striking and ex- 
tended prophecies to be found in the Bible ; not an 
obscure verse, where agreement is impossible, but an 
oracle running through twenty-seven chapters ; and yet 
German commentators have not yet decided as to the 
fundamental principle of interpretation, whether the 
subject is an individual or a personified aggregate. 
Neither do the two parties formed by this difference 
agree among themselves. Of the first class, some inter- 
pret it of King Uzziah, others of Josiah, others of the 
prophet Isaiah himself, others of an unknown prophet 
persecuted and killed in the exile;* Bunsen alone, 
after Grotius, of the prophet Jeremiah. In the second 
class, the greatest names of Germany stand arrayed 
against each other. Eichhorn, Hendewerck, Kdster, 
Hitzig, Ewald, Beck, interpret the prophecy of the 
Jewish people, actual or ideal. Paulus, Thenius, 
Maurer, von Colin, Knobel, say that " The servant of 
the Lord'* means the better portion of the exiles. Rosen- 
miiller, Gesenius, De "Wette, assert that he is a per- 
sonification of the collective prophetic order, f For 
several of these interpretations, these distinguished 
writers are indebted to Jewish polemics. The applica- 
tion to Josiah was invented by Abarbanel in the six- 
teenth century; that to Jeremiah by Saadiah Gaon, in 
the ninth century ; that to the whole Jewish people 
was known to the Jews with whom Origen disputed, 
and is most generally accepted by modern Jews ; that 
to the pious or better portion of the people is found in 
Eashi, in the eleventh century. The ancient Jewish 
interpretation was that which referred the prophecy to 
the Messiah. From the LXX. it can be inferred with 
certainty that they distinguished between the servant 
of the Lord and the people of Israel. This is evident 
from their translation of xlii. 6 and xlix. 6, where they 

* See Hengstenberg, ' Christologie,' i. p. 806 ; Gesenius's * Commentary/ 
iii. pp. 164-172. 

t See Knobel, ' Commentary,' pp. 382-390. 



Essay III.] PEOPHEOY. I49 

plainly make the Lord's servant "The raiser up of 
Jacob," and " The restorer of the dispersion of Israel," 
and " a covenant of the people," which words cause 
siicli difficulties to Rationalist interpreters as to make 
them violate the commonest proprieties of Hebrew 
idiom. "When, therefore, the LXX. inserted the words 
" Jacob" and " Israel " in xlii. 1, " Jacob is mj servant, 
and I will help him : Israel is mine elect, my soul hath 
accepted him," — they did not mean to apply those 
w^ords to the people, but to give to the servant of the 
Lord that title which he has in the Hebrew text in xlix. 
3. " And He said to me, Thou art my servant : Israel 
art thou, in whom I will be glorified," * w^here Gesenius, 
and before him J. D. Michaelis, in order to get rid of 
the plain meaning, propose to set critical authority at 
defiance, and oust the word " Israel " from the text. 
The LXX. have it here all right, where they plainly 
distinguish between the Lord's servant and the people, 
and thereby prove that they thought the words " Jacob" 
and " Israel " titles of this servant, and not the name of 
the people. And, therefore, in xlii. 19, " Who is blind but 
my servant? or deaf as my messenger that I sent? who 
is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord's 
servant ? " which they interpret of the people, and not 
of the servant ; they turn the singulars into j^lurals to 
prevent mistake — kcui tI^ tv(^\o^ a)OC rj ol iralhe<; [jlov, 
Kol Kca^oi aX}C rj ol KVpcevovre'i avTMV ; koI iTVcj)\(o67]orap 
ol SovXot Tov Qeol. 

The early traditions of the Hebraist Jews are clear 
and unequivocal, and are identical with the New 
Testament interpretation, as is admitted even by the 
modern Rabbis, f who, for polemical reasons, inter- 
pret difierently. Aben Esra, in the twelfth century, 
says, " Many have interpreted this chapter of Messiah 
because our ancients of blessed memor^^ have said that 

* This is the translation given by Gesenius of the text as it stands. 

t Bj modern Rabbis are meant those who lived from the 11th century on, 
when, partly owing to the hostility excited by the Crusaders in the Jewish 
mind, and partly from their intercourse with the Mahometans, Jewish inter- 
pretation and Jewish theology underwent a great change, and diverged 
widely from ancient Judaism as well as from Christianity. 



150 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay III. 

Messiah was born tlie same day that the Temple was 
destroyed, and that he is bound in chains." Rabbi 
Alshech, who flourished in Palestine in the middle of 
the sixteenth century, makes a similar confession — 
" Behold our Rabbis have with one mouth confirmed, 
and received by tradition that King Messiah is here 
spoken of ..... . He beareth the iniquities of the 

children of Israel, and behold His reward is with 
Him." The truth of these confessions may be seen by 
consulting the ancient books of authority. In Isai. 
xlii. 1, and lii. 13, Jonathan, about the time of our 
Lord, adds Messiah after the word '' servant ;" " Be- 
hold, my servant, the Messiah." The book of Zohar, 
regarded with the utmost reverence by all pious Jews, 
and parts of which are certainly from the first century 
of Christianity, also says plainly that Messiah bears 
the sins of the people, and that '' If he had not re- 
moved them from Israel and taken them upon himself, 
no man could bear the chastisement of Israel on ac- 
count of the punishment pronounced in the Law. 
This is what is written — Surely He hath home our 
sicknesses. The Talmud (Sanhedrin, vol. 98, col. 2), 
the Psikta, and Yalkut Shimoni, all have the same 
interpretation. "Behold my servant shall deal very 
prudently — this is the King Messiah. He shall be 
exalted, and extolled, and be very high. He shall be 
exalted more than Abraham. . . . He shall be extolled 

more than Moses. . . . He shall be higher than the 

ministering angels. 'But He was wounded for our 
transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities : the 
chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with 
His stripes we are healed.' Rabbi Huna, in the name 
of Rabbi Acha says, the chastisements were divided 
into three parts : — one to David and the fathers ; one 
to the rebellious generation ; and one to King Messiah." 
Indeed, such possession had this interpretation of the 
Jewish mind, that it found its way into the prayers of 
the Synagogue, and there it remains until this day. 
In the^ Liturgy for the Day of Atonement is found the 
following remarkable passage, which is given from 



EbsatIII.] PEOPHEOY. " 15 X 

David Levi's edition of the Synagogue service books, 
and in his translation. " Before he created anything, 
He established His dwelling (the temple) and Yinnon.* 
Our righteous anointed is departed from us : horror 
hath seized us and we have none to justify. He hatb 
borne the yoke of our iniquities, and of our transgres- 
sion, and is wounded because of our transgression. 
He beareth our sins on His shoulder that He may first 
pardon for our iniquities. We shall be healed by His 
wound at the time that the Eternal will create Him 
(the Messiah) as a new creature. O bring Him up 
from the circle of the earth, raise Him up from Seir, to 
assemble ns the second time on Lebanon by the hand 
of Yinnon.''^ f The Jewish editor, David Levi, en- 
deavours to break the force of this passage by a note, 
explaining " our righteous anointed " of Josiah. But 
as he confesses that the whole passage refers to the 
Messiah, with whose name it begins and ends, and as 
the Hebrew words for " our righteous anointed One," 
literally, "Messiah our righteousness," are a common 
Rabbinic designation of the Messiah, taken from Jer. 
xiii. 6, this interpretation can only be regarded as a pole- 
mic evasion to avert the Jewish mind from the Christian 
interpretation of Isai. liii. Even in Levi's translation 
the passage speaks for itself, and as found in the service 
for the most solemn day in the whole Jewish year, 
proves that the Messianic interpretation was not only 
the ancient, but the national reception of the chapter. :j: 
The Rabbinic tradition of two Messiahs, one to suffer 
and the other to reign, seems also to be a witness or a 
homage to the ancient interpretation of this chapter, 
and to the deep national conviction of the need of an 

* Tinnon is the Hebrew word translated in the A. V. " shall be con- 
tinued," Ps. Ixxii. 17. But according to Jewish tradition, it is a name of the 
Messiah. " Yinnon was His name before the sun," i.e. iDefore the creation 
of the world. As it comes from the verb "jID, to 'propagate^ they seem to have 
taken it in the same sense as n?2^, -iton, "^Sa, and to' have understood by it 
the Sonship of Messiah. 

t " The name of the Messiah, as alluding to Psalm Ixxii. 17." (Levi's 
Note.) ^ 

X Compare also the Prayers for the Feast of Passover, p. 72, where is 
another quotation of Isaiah liii. 13, which David Levi himself says means 
the true Messiah. 



152 ' ^^^5 TO JAITH. [EsSATlIL 

atonement. That this national persuasion ought to 
have some weight, even if not supported by the Xew 
Testament, will be admitted by candid readers. It 
acquires double weight from the fact that this inter- 
pretation is contrary to the worldly hopes of a con- 
quering Messiah, so ardently entertained in the days 
of Roman domination in Palestine, and to which Eab- 
binic polemics still return in order to prove that Jesus 
cannot be the Messiah. liVith such hopes and prej- 
udices, the idea of a suffering and despised Messiah 
could never have arisen, nor have been entertained, if 
it had not previously existed, and been received as 
true and genuine. The idea of pardon and salvation 
through the sufferings of another was equally contrary 
to the self-righteous doctrine of the Pharisees. The ex- 
istence and continuance of such an interpretation, is, 
therefore, strong proof of its antiquity, and of its 
original source. The national interpretation of one of 
their own records, under such considerations, ought to 
have at least as much weight as the discordant and 
controverted opinions of critics living, according to 
their own showing, 2300 years after the record was 
written, and filled Vith antecedent prejudices against 
a true exegesis. 

He nnist indeed be a man " that leans to his own 
understanding," who can lightly esteem the judgment 
of the ancient Jewish Church, and the common con- 
sent of all Christian scholars for nearly 1800 years, "^ 
and believe that he has found what such a goodly 
company have failed to perceive. But the Christian 
bows to^still higher authority than the common judg- 
ment of this mighty host of"" the great, the good, the 
wise, and the learned, in so many ages and nations : he 
learns from Him whose Spirit spate in the Prophets, 
and guided His disciples and Apostles into all truth. 
Christ and His Apostles have interpreted this chapter 
of His sufferings, death, and resurrection-glory ; and 
the providence'of God has verified the interpretation. 

* The one exception of Grotius makes the universal agreement the more 
striking. 



Essay III.] PEOPHEOY. 153_ 

Not to speak of the past, our eyes still see the fulfil- 
ment of this prediction. The most improbable prophecy 
in the world was this which predicted that a Jew, de- 
spised by his people, numbered amongst transgressors, 
cat off out of the land of the living, should, neverthe- 
less, prolong his days, be the light of the Gentiles, and 
God's salvation to the ends of the earth. And yet 
this is what has been accomplished, and is accomplish- 
ing itself before our eyes. In spite of all the pride, 
prejudice, and power of Greeks and Romans, the 
ignorance and fury of barbarian invaders, the self- 
sufficiency of human knowledge, the vices of civilisa- 
tion, Jesus of ISTazarethhas triumphed, and triumj)hs, and 
is still the light of the world. The Christian humbly and 
thankfully accepts the teaching of the Lord, and the 
testimony of God's providence. The wondrous outline 
stands vividly marked on the page of prophecy ; the 
fulfilment as unmistakably inscribed on the prominent 
pages of the world's history. The one answers to the 
other, as the mirror to the human face, and he cannot 
be mistaken. No microscopic investigations of criti- 
cism can make the agreement doubtful. He does not 
despise or disregard the labours of even hostile critics. 
On the contrary, he carefully considers their every 
suggestion, thankfully receives the light which they 
have thrown on words and phrases, acknowledges their 
diligence, their genius, their learning, and their honesty 
so far as their dogmatic prejudices allow them to be 
impartial. But Christ has spoken, and by Christ's 
words he abides. He, therefore, believes that the 
prophets spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost ; that they uttered predictions ; that many of 
the most seemingly improbable have been fulfilled, and 
are pledges that the remainder shall also be accom- 
plished. He cannot join in the unbelieving cry, 
" Where is the promise of His coming ? " He does 
not believe that " since the fathers fell asleep all things 
continue as they were from the beginning of the 
creation," but that Christ "in His majesty rides pros- 

7* 



154 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IIL 

perously on in the cause of truth, and meekness, and 
righteousness ; " and " though the vision tarry," he 
waits for it, assured that it is " for an appointed time," 
and that " at the end it shall speak and not lie — ^it will 
surely come, it will not tarry." = 



ESSAY IV. 

IDEOLOGY AND S UBS EIPTION. 



CONTENTS OF ESSAY IV. 



1 . Introductoey remarks— practical ap- 

plications and bearings of Ideol- 
ogy. 

2. Professed objects of Ideology— chief 

peculiarity of the system. 

3. The contrast between this and older 

forms of scepticism. 

4. The two systems mutually destruc- 

tive. 
6. Proposed inquiry into the origin of 
the system. 

6. The outward world governed by uni- 

versal laws. 

7. Difficulty of applying general princi- 

ples to the events of secular history. 
Fiction and history compared. 

6. The Ideologist's view of sacred his- 
tory accounted for. 

B, 10. Contrasted with that taken by 
Christians. 
Xl. The Christian view illustrated and 
confirmed. 

12. Alternative set forth — the system of 

Ideologists repugnant to conscience, 
and to the Englishman's love of 
truth. 

13. Historical inquiry into the origin and 

development of Ideology. 

14. The Life of Jesus by Strauss. 

15. Early training of Strauss at Ttibingen. 

16. Strauss at Berlin. Influence and char- 

acter of Schleiermacher. 

17. Hegel — his position, influence, and 

general principles. 

18. Publication of the 'Life of Jesus'— 

state of Germany at the time — effects 
of the publication. 

19. General objects of that work. 

20. First part of the work destructive — 

way prepared by De "Wette, Semler, 
Gabler, and Schleiermacher. Myths. 

21. Eesult of the first part— as regards 

our Lord's history, and discourses. 

22. Strauss's theory as to the ideal truths 

which underlie the history of 
Christ. 

23. Development of Pantheism in the 

work on Christian Doctrine. 

24. Struggle of the followers of Schleier- 

macher and Hegel to shake off the 
responsibility. Other developments 



of Hegelian principles. F. Eichter, 
Bruno Bauer. 

25. Eothe's work on the Christian Church 

— comparison with Dr. Arnold's 
view. 

26. Ultimate results of Hegelian princi- 

ples. Feuerbach, Communists, Athe- 
ists, Eevolution of 1848. 

27. Eeaction, Ideology brought to Eng- 

land. 

28. Identity of principles as regards a 

future state. 

29. Church and State. 

30. Eejection of supernatural agency- 

myths — general scepticism. 

31. Position of Ideologists as ministers of 

the Church. 

32. Doctrinal safeguards. 

33. The practice of the Apostles consid- 

ered generally. 

34. St. Paul's proceedings in the case of 

the fornicator at Corinth, and of 
heretical teachers. 

35. The practice of the Early Church- 

doctrinal limitation not inaugurated 
by Constantine. Council of Nice. 
The Creed accepted by the State. 

36. The practice of our own Church. 

The Bible or Word of God the 
foundation of fundamentals — the 
Creeds fundamental. Objects of the 
Articles. Subscription not required 
of the laity, but of ministers. 

37. Eeason of the difference. 

38. Subscription a promise, as regards not 

belief, but ministerial acts. 
89. Obligation moral, not merely legal. 

40. Extent of the obligation. Feelings 

of the laity touching the meaning of 
subscription. 

41. The alleged alienation of the people 

from the Church. The fact doubt- 
ful — the cause not to be found in 
doctrinal teaching. Effects of the 
substitution of an ethical system for 
Christian doctrines. Position of a 
rationalistic minister in using the 
Liturgy. 

42. True object and duty of the Church. 

Probable results of changes. 
Concluding remarks. 



IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 



1. The term Ideology is strange, and certainly not 
welcome to English ears ; nor is it, perhaps, much to 
be feared that the system which bears the name will 
find many adherents, or exercise any direct influence 
upon the current of religious thought. A summary 
rejection may, therefore, at first sight, appear to be an 
effectual and satisfactory mode of disposing of its 
claims. Such, indeed, might be the case if we consid- 
ered merely the abstract speculations with which Ideol- 
ogy is connected : but in its applications and bearings 
it assumes a very practical form. It touches the most 
important questions of morality, the most vital truths 
of religion. It affects the veracity or trustworthiness 
of the witnesses of revelation, the genuineness and in- 
tegrity of its documents, their origin and interpreta- 
tion, and by a strictly logical, though not perhaps a 
very obvious consequence, the relations between the 
Church, her people, and ministers. Such points must 
be scrutinized ; the true character of the system, the 
principles on which it rests, and its inevitable results 
ought to be distinctly ascertained. Should it prove^ 
as in all former controversies has been the case, that 
some great truths, not generally recognized in their 
fulness, find in the system, false and pernicious as it 
may be, a partial and inadequate expression ; and that 
the very objections of ideologists enable us to compre- 
hend, somewhat more clearly than heretofore, some es- 
sential characteristics of the Christian revelation, that 
result, at least, will be welcome to those who watch 
with interest, though not without perplexity and ap- 
prehension the progress of a religious speculation in 



158 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

an age remarkable for fearlessness, and, it may be 
hoped, for sincerity, in the pursnit of truth. 

2. The object of Ideology, as it is described in the 
writings of Strauss, who first presented it in a complete 
and systematic form, was to reconcile belief in the spir- 
itual truths which he recognized as the ideal basis of 
Christianity, with rejection of all the miraculous events, 
and by far the largest portion of the narrative, with 
which those truths are connected. The rejection rests 
upon an assumption of the utter incredibility of mira- 
cles, as irreconcilable with philosophical principles, 
and as contrary to experience ; and it is supported, as 
we shall see presently, by an unscrupulous use of argu- 
ments supplied by various schools of infidelity. But 
the chief peculiarity of the system is that, subject to 
this assumption, it professes to account for the exist- 
ence of a belief in the facts, and for the form in which 
the facts are represented, and to explain the real sig- 
nificance of narratives involving supernatural elements. 
Tlie ideologist, or idealist, asserts that such narratives 
are myths, which it would be absurd to regard as true 
in the 'letter, but which may yet be treated with re- 
spect, and even with reverence, as symbols and repre- 
sentations of ideas which are of permanent interest and 
importance to mankind. The facts did not, and could 
not, occur in the manner or under the circumstances 
described in Scripture, but they may yet be substan- 
tially, that is, ideally true, as products of human con- 
sciousness, as expressing at least the aspirations or pre- 
sentiments of a nature akin to the divine. Many writ- 
ers of this school (and Strauss himself in several pas- 
sages) adopt, at times, a far more offensive tone, and 
do not hesitate to attribute the origin of large portions 
of the Gospel narrative to the prepossessions of the 
writers, to their ignorance, credulity, and fanaticism, 
or to selfish and interested motives. "We do not pro- 
pose to discuss those speculations. Tlie only form in 
which the theory of ideologists is calculated to produce 
any effect uj)on generous and elevated minds, is that 
which accepts the ideal principles as true, while it de- 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. I59 

nies the historical character of the relations in which 
they are bodied forth. 

3. One point strikes ns prima facie in considering 
this theory : and that is the very remarkable contrast 
which it exhibits to the position of those who formerly, 
either in England or on the continent, denied the ob- 
jective facts of revelation. The strongest attacks have 
proceeded hitherto, not only from a distinct, but a dia- 
metrically opposite point of view. Sceptics and infi- 
dels used to argue that the doctrinal statements in the 
Bible are opposed to reason, and more especially to the 
moral consciousness of man ; and they rejected the his- 
torical relations chiefly because they involved miracu- 
lous attestations to those statements. That position was 
at least consistent and intelligible ; the issue one about 
which there could be no mistake. The Christian advo- 
cate had, of course, to prove that the history was sus- 
tained by evidence suiSicient to satisfy impartial in- 
quirers ; but his great duty was to vindicate the Scrip- 
tural representations of the Divine attributes, and the 
principles on which God is described as conducting the 
moral government of the world. In the new system, 
on the contrary,' the very adaptation of the doctrines 
of Scripture to. our spiritual nature is taken as a proof, 
or presumption, that the forms in which they are pre- 
sented must have been invented or remoulded by the 
plastic imagination of man. It is assumed not merely 
that the existence of certain feelings, opinions, or as- 
pirations accounts for belief in the facts narrated by 
the evangelists, but that, taken as a whole, the object- 
ive system of revelation sprang out of the belief — was 
spontaneously evolved from the half-conscious opera- 
tions of the human mind. Thus the need of a recon- 
ciliation with God was repudiated as a superstition by 
the old sceptic ; according to the idealist, it was the 
feeling of such a need which invested the death of an 
innocent man with the attributes of a sacrificial atone- 
ment. The longing for communion with God, derided 
as mysticism by the former, according to the latter, 
originated the idea of the incarnation ; while all that 



160 ^^^S '^^ FAITH. [Essay IV. 

appeared necessary to substantiate the doctrine, in the 
way of miracnlous attestation or divine endovrment, 
vras supplied by the credulity or imagination of the 
followers of one who, at a critical period in the world's 
history, concentrated in himself the reverence and ad- 
miration of zealous converts. Clustering around one 
gracious form, one wise, and loving, and truly sublime 
being, human yearnings, human tendernesses, sought 
and found in him a visible representation of the Deity.* 
In short, according to ideologists, the circumstances of 
our Lord's nativity and baptism. His conflict with Sa- 
tan, His manifestations of superhuman powers, and 
predictions of the immediate or remote future. His res- 
urrection and ascension, — indeed, all the cardinal facts 
of religion, — are so far from being, as older sceptics 
affirmed, opposed to our moral consciousness, that 
they are all but adequate representations of the ideal, 
which, if it could be realized, would satisfy the very 
deepest and most universal aspirations of mankind. 

4. Certainly no greater contrast could be imagined 
between two classes of men who concur in rejecting the 
facts, and employ nearly the same processes in their at- 
temj)ts to discredit the sacred narrative, so far as it in- 
volves what they are pleased to call violations f of uni- 
versal laws. It may be that the two systems are not 
merely contrasted to each other, but that each contains 
a principle, which, if disentangled from the errors in 
which it is enveloped, may suffice for the exposure and 
overthrow of the opposite fallacy. Destroying each 
other mutually as systems, each may leave a residuum 
of truth available for the defence of the position which 
they both assail. 

On the one side we have the fact that inquirers, 
whom none would hold to be influenced by doctrinal 
prejudices and prepossessions, recognize the adaptation 

* Strauss in his answer to Steudel makes the whole impulsive force of 
Christianity centre in the personality of Jesus. In the concluding chapter of 
the ' Leben Jesu,' he acknowledges the peculiar and unique grandeur of our 
Lord's person. 

t See Butler's remarks on the objections to miracles, 'Analogy,' part ii. 
c. iv. His theory, that miracles may be referred to some universal, though 
unknown, law has been strangely misrepresented. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. jgl 

of Cliristian principles * to the wants and instincts of 
hnmanitj. This fact not only contradicts, bnt it utter- 
ly subverts, the position of those who assert that the 
doctrines are so repugnant to those instincts as to make 
the transactions incredible by which they are attested. 
The old dry scepticism cannot stand when confronted 
with such a recognition of the intrinsic excellence and 
spirituality of Christian truth, as is at present actually 
professed by the majority, or at any rate by the most 
intellectual and influential, among those whom free- 
thinkers regard as the leaders and representatives of 
modern thought.f That form "of disbelief has the 
ground cut away from under its feet. It must be re- 
garded as a mere subjective impression, or an indica- 
tion of disorder in a man's moral nature. The minds 
which reject such truths cannot be in what mere philos- 
ophers, looking on the whole matter from without, 
would admit to be a healthy and normal state. 

Still the old sceptic has some stubborn facts on his 
side which are wholly inexplicable on the opposite 
system. There is the fact that, since the first promul- 
gation of Christianity, multitudes have rejected, myri- 
ads misunderstood, or are utterly unable to realize its 
distinctive doctrines, — those, for instance, which the 
most thoughtful idealists regard with admiration. This 
is surely incompatible with the theory that the human 
mind could of itself have originated or developed the 
doctrines, or that it should, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, have distorted historical events so as to repre- 
sent them in a concrete form. Tliose doctrines jar too 
harshly with the mind in its natural state, excite man's 
fears too painfully, to admit the supposition that they 
could be the spontaneous product of human conscious- 
ness. Under certain conditions, it is true that they 

* That was the opinion of all the followers of Hegel until they were 
broken into opposite parties by the publication of Strauss's book. Of late 
years the denial of such adaptation marked a man's place on the extreme 
left, or destructive side. 

t In fact the overthrow of the older Rationalism in Germany, which ex- 
actly corresponded with English Deism, is claimed as the great work of the 
system in which Ideology originated. See Schwartz, Zur Geschichte der 
neuesten Theologie, p. 95. 



1^2 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

find an. echo in the conscience, and give an intelligible 
solution to many dark problems of the nniverse : bnt 
the yery first of those conditions is a subjective change 
of which neither sceptic nor ideologist can give any 
probable account. The religion which involves those 
doctrines, which speaks of a futurity of retribution, 
which contradicts the most widely spread prejudices, 
and sets up an exemplar utterly unlike the heroes and 
deities of all nations, is one which certainly could not 
have been devised or anticipated by man. Thus scep- 
ticism by the very fact of its j)revalence overthrows 
the position of the ideologist : while the objections and 
contradictions of both find at once their explanation 
and their refutation in that position which we hold, 
not only as a matter of faith, but of experience. Chris- 
tian truth, and the facts of revelation by which it is 
rej)resented, are in accordance with the fundamental 
principles of human reason and conscience ; yet they 
are only accepted by man when those principles are 
themselves distinctly recognized, — that is, when both 
reason and conscience are raised out of the state of 
corruption and degradation into which they had unques- 
tionably sunk when Christianity was first promulgated. 
The accordance removes all a priori moral objections 
to the consideration of the evidence by which those 
truths and facts are attested, while the actual repug- 
nance of so large a portion of mankind to admit the 
doctrine is absolutely fatal to the theory of its origina- 
tion in human consciousness, apart from an external 
supernatural impulse. 

5. This argument is not to be set aside as a mere 
logomachy, an attempt to neutralize conflicting opin- 
ions. It is but one instance among many, of the way 
in which truth is elicited by the collision of opposite 
errors. Our object, however, is not so much to confute 
as to convince, certainly not to exasperate, conscien- 
tious opponents ; and this object may perhaps be better 
attained by an inquiry how the contemplation of Chris- 
tianity, being a perfect realization of a perfect ideal, 
could have suggested to any one such a theory as that 
which is presented to us by ideologists. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCPJPTION. " ^63 

6. In some sense all philosophers admit that the 
outward world is the result and representation of the 
invisible. According to materialists all phsenomena 
are the products and exhibition of self-sustaining and 
self-evolving powers which pervade all nature — that 
is, of invisible forces known oidy by their effects. Ac- 
cording to Theists the whole universe is the product 
and manifestation of a creating, preserving, and ruling 
will. The events of history are in a special sense mani- 
festations of the law which that will imposes upon the 
development of the human race. The law itself is dis- 
coverable to a certain extent by reflection upon those 
events ; Christians believe that it is revealed fully in 
the sacred writings. All facts indeed are in some sense 
the concrete results and expression of some absolute 
principle, some unseen power, some general law.* 
There is in reality no such thing as a dead matter of 
fact, no chance, no casual occurrence, in the history of 
the world. Joined one to the other in an unbroken 
series of cause and effect, every fact, every event finds 
its necessary place in the universal order ; each is a link 
in that chain, which according to materialists had no 
beginning and will have no end, which according to 
Theists is fastened by each extremity to the throne of 
God. Christians accept the statement that all exist- 
ences are the result of universal law, but they hold 
that law to be the expression of a supreme intellect 
and infinite love : deriviner its force solely from the will 
of God. ^ 

7. Here we stand on a platform on which, whether 
agreed or not, we can at least understand our relative 
positions. We may advance a stage further, and that 
brings ue to the real issue. It may be true, that in a 
general survey of history, principles of law and order 
are discernible ; but it is certain that the difiiculty is 
great, if not insuperable, when we seek to ascertain 

* This truth is recognized quite as distinctly by Butler and all other great 
champions of Revelation as by its strongest opponents. " All reasonable 
men know certainly that there cannot be any such thing as chance ; and con- 
clude that the things which have this appearance are the results of general 
laws, and may be reduced into them." Analogy, ii. c. iv. § 3. 



164 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV 



the operations of those principles in individual eases,* 
when we would apply them to account for events re- 
corded by secular historians. "When thought sweeps 
over a wide expanse, it is confused by the multiplicity 
of apparently abnormal and contradictory phsenomena — 

" It is most hard, with an untroubled ear, 
Those dark inwoven harmonies to hear." 

Certain personages stand forth from time to time, in 
grand critical epochs of the world's development, as 
representative men, but seldom, if ever, are they ade- 
quate representatives of high, never of the highest 
principles.f Striking indications are given of an un- 
seen presence by which all processes are guided, and 
of ends which all subordinate occurrences subserve. 
But over the whole there is a mist, sometimes broken, 
sometimes seeming to transmit light from a higher 
sphere, but for the most part dense and impenetrable. 
Aberrations and inconsistencies, contradictions and di- 
vergencies, confound the philosophic reader of history, 
in the attempt to arrive at a distinct perception of the 
general principles, the universal laws, which underlie 
and govern the complicated series of external events. 

One unquestionable result of this fact requires 
special attention. The discrepancy between events as 
they occur in secular history, and the absolute ideas 
or principles which all events rightly understood ex- 
emplify and represent, is in point of fact so far recog- 
nized l3y the human mind, that whenever w^e read a 
narrative in which the ideal and real are presented in 
perfect accordance, we are all but irresistibly impressed 
with the conviction that it must be fictitious. Fiction, 
as Aristotle long since taught, is more catholic than 

* Thus Butler, 1. c. : " It is "but an exceeding little way, and in but few 
respects, that we can trace up the natural course of things before us to gen- 
eral laws." Mr. Jowett has said, in an essay of most melancholy tendency, 
*' In the study of ethnology, or geology, in the records of our own or past 
times, a curtain drops over the Divine presence." — On the Epistles of St. Paul, 
vol. ii., p. 433, 2nd edition. 

t This position and its bearings upon Ideologists were discussed with 
great ability and persuasiveness by Ullmann in the ' Studien und Kritiken,' 
1836, No. 8. This treatise, which was afterwards reprinted with the title 
* Historisch oder Mythisch,' induced Strauss himself to modify the conclusion 
of his ' Leben Jesu.' 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 165 

reality ; tliat is, it is a more obvious and perfect exem- 
plification of general principles. A perfectly good, 
and entirely consistent man, a life in which all events 
shonld be so ordered as to harmonize with our ideas 
of fitness and justice, a series of events in which the 
moral government of the Supreme Being should be out- 
wardly and demonstrably exemplified, would seem to 
us from a purely secular point of view a sheer impossi- 
bility. The Hegelian is right, so far as ordinary men 
and ordinary events are concerned, in his theory that 
the ideal is ever striving for realization, but that it 
never is realized. That is an old truth which our own 
Hooker has stated in terms at once more simple and 
accurate — " All things besides, God excepted, are some- 
what in possibility which as yet they are not in act." * 
The map of a country drawn in outlines of geometrical 
symmetry, a narrative in wdiich all events are the de- 
velopment of some great principle and conduce to some 
one intelligible result, alike produce the impression of 
unreality. We do not see such things. They are con- 
trary to experience. Scarcely any amount of external 
evidence would satisfy us of their truth. 

It is just at this point that the controversy between 
the Christian and the Ideologist arises. The question 
is simply this : are the same principles applicable to 
secular history and to the records of a scheme which 
is professedly one of divine interpositions ? f We see 
perfectly well that if they were applicable, the conclu- 
sions of the ideologist could scarcely be controverted. 
To one who does not view the sacred narrative as a 
thing apart, not merely in certain details, but in its 
entire construction, resting altogether upon difi'erent 
principles from those which he is accustomed to apply 
in historical investigations, its facts, whether or not 
what is commonly called miraculous, have prima facie 
this characteristic of fiction. The long series of events 
recorded in the Bible, connected for ages with one 
family, but involving in its consequences all the des- 
tinies of mankind, unquestionably exemplifies certain 

* E. P. i. 5. t See, for instance, Strauss's 'Leben Jesu,' Einleitung, § 8. 



IQQ AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

ideal principles, and that tliroiighont and completelj, 
in its organic structure and in its several parts. In the 
opinion of one who dismisses, without argument, all 
notions of supernatural intervention, such a fact is un- 
accountable, excepting upon the supposition that the 
history has been invented or essentially changed in 
character by the writers who have transmitted the 
traditional records in their actual state. "Whether he 
attribute this to design, to the influence of high or low 
feelings, to superstition, ignorance, prejudice, or, on 
the other hand, to noble and generous aspirations, may 
be admitted to be a matter of considerable import so 
far as regards his own spiritual state ; ^ but the result 
is alike destructive so far as regards the bearings of the 
argument upon the substantial verity of the Scriptures. 
The more solemn and majestic the events, the more 
completely in the ideologist's mJnd do they bear the 
essential character of a myth. In no portion of Holy 
Writ is such criticism more destructive than in that 
which presents to us the Life of our Lord — that perfect 
embodiment of an ideal, in itself without a parallel, in 
its realization transcending all conceptions of the human 
mind.f 

9. We thus account for the position of the ideolo- 
gist, and in accounting for it, we seem to gain a singu- 
larly distinct perception of what is surely the most 
positive and peculiar characteristic of Christianity. 
The attributes, the very nature of God, are manifested 
in the government of the world, viewed by the light of 
Scripture, but most specially and completely in the 
Person and works of the Son. Just in this point con- 
sists the real contrast between sacred and profane his- 
tory. Profane history may not, and indeed it cannot 
contradict, but it certainly does not distinctly teach, 

* All these influences are adopted by Strauss, as acting in co-ordination 
with the philosophical mvthus, that which clothes in the garb of historical 
narrative a simple thought, a precept or idea of the time. L. J., Einleitung, 
§ 8. 

t Thus even Grotz, quoted in the 'Westminster Review,' July 1861. 
Strauss speaks scarcely less strongly of the marvellous and unrivalled beauty 
of the conception. See his answer to Ullmann, ' Vergangliches uud Bleiben.' 
1839. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCKIPTION. iQfj 

some of the most momentous and necessary truths — 
such as the unity of God, the unity of the human race, 
the unity of human history, the universal principles of 
morality, or the systematic development of the pur- 
poses of an almighty and loving will. Historians, ex- 
cepting so far as they have drawn light from other 
sources, do not in point of fact distinctly set forth all 
or any of these truths. Sacred history teaches them 
all, and teaches them not by mere abstractions, but by 
the representation of events in which our conceptions 
of what is right, reasonable, and desirable, find a per- 
fect satisfaction. Our only postulate is one which can- 
not be denied on rational grounds by any but atheists* 
— that God has the will and the power of making Him- 
self known to His creatures. That granted, the reason- 
ableness and therefore the probability of such a man- 
ifestation of Himself can scarcely be denied. The in- 
tellect, freed from the shackles of sin and knowledge 
falsely so called, fastens with joy upon the one clue to 
the labyrinthine mazes of speculation. Holding it d 
priori to be possible that the Divine love may choose 
thus to deliver us from dark and dreary bewilderment, 
we gladly accept tiie proofs that such has been His 
gracious will. We believe that in another state the 
ideal will be thoroughly and universally realized, that 
each act and each existence, in its place and its degree, 
will be then a perfect exemplification of some eternal 
reality ; and of this we are equally convinced that a 
foretaste and anticipation of that future harmony has 
been vouchsafed in the Scriptural narrative, most es- 
pecially in the life and person of Jesus Christ. 

10. It is a strange and instructive contrast which is 
thus presented between the effects of the Scriptural 
narrative upon the ideologist and upon the simple- 
hearted Christian. The traces of harmonious accord- 

* Including all schools of Pantheism which deny the consciousness of 
God, and moreover those Deists who maintain the absolute necessity of all 
manifestations of the Divine nature in the world — who make the world, so to 
speak, the complete manifestation and body of the Deity. Such are J. H. 
Fichte, and C. H. Weisse, Schwartz, &c., in Germany; F. Newman (if, in- 
deed, he recognizes at present any personal consciousness in God), and many 
others, in England. 



IQQ AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

ance impress the former with tiie conviction tliat he 
is listening to the record of a dream — beautiful it may 
be, and significant, — the dream of a poet, or a saint, of 
a spirit full of divine yearnings and sympathies, but 
still a dream — an empty, unsubstantial dream. The 
Christian sees in that accordance the evidence of a 
divine power ; of all eifects upon his mind the very 
last would be a doubt as to the reality of the objective 
facts which show how that power has been exerted for 
the regeneration of man. 

11. This is a strong position to occupy, a secure 
resting-place for the spirit. We may profitably dwell 
somewhat in detail upon the thoughts which it sug- 
gests. Every fact in the life of our Master is in accord- 
ance with a spiritual principle which it actually and 
completely represents. Man, conscious of inherent 
weakness, longs for union with God. In the incarna- 
tion, God and man become one. 

Man feels himself exposed to a strange fascination 
which attracts him towards evil and draws him away 
from God. In Christ he meets, baffles, and overcomes, 
the personal agent of all temptation. Man feels that 
he is a slave to nature, over which a sure instinct tells 
him that he is destined to rule. In Christ he exercises 
that dominion, making all physical forces subservient 
to his will. Man fears disease, affliction, and bereave- 
ment. In Christ all sorrows become medicinal, and 
conduce to the perfection of our renewed nature. Man 
has two great foes — sin, and death the penalty of sin. 
Christ crushes sin, and expels it from His dominions ; 
death He converts into the last best friend, the opener 
of the portals of eternal life. Moved by the Spirit of 
God, the mind of man from age to age has uttered aspira- 
tions, more or less imperfectly comprehended, for a Sav- 
iour, a righteous Lord, a manifestation of God in a liv- 
ing human Person. One by one the characteristics of 
such a Person were traced by the spirit of prophecy : all 
the conditions of that manifestation, the object of His 
coming, the time, the circumstances, the various signs 
by which He might be recognized, were clearly pre- 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. jgg 

dieted ; those predictions were graven upon the hearts 
of the Israelites, and were even partially known to the 
Gentiles.* In Jesus, by a combination of circumstan- 
ces which seems fortuitous, and, so far as human agents 
were concerned, beyond all question were undesigned, 
those predictions were fulfilled, apparent contradictions 
were reconciled ; and, in a higher sense than the most 
gifted seers had imagined, those characteristics w^ere 
exemplified. We see in Jesus perfect man, the one 
normal, ideal man, the one representative of the type 
which was in the thought of God when He moulded 
the frame of Adam, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life.f In personal union with th^t perfect 
man we are taught to discern the living "Word, the Son 
of God. If the whole structure of our religion be not 
a baseless vision, if all our hopes be not a miserable de- 
lusion, it is true, simply and absolutely true, that in 
that Person the perfect ideal is perfectly real. We ex- 
pect, therefore, to find — in fact we should be confounded 
if we did not find — in the history of the God-man;}; just 
that harmony, unity, and complete interpenetration of 
all that is good and beautiful in abstract principles, 
that perfect representation of inward spiritual truths, 
of which genius has dreamed, but which it has vainly 
striven to realize. We feel that such a history must be 
sacramental. And thus, in the very facts which create 
distrust in the ideologist, we find the strongest con- 
firmation of our faith. We are entitled to say to him 
— You cannot surely be so unreasonable as to call upon 

* Strauss adopts the view that the whole life of Jesus, all that He should 
or would do, had an ideal existence in the Jejvish mind long before His birth. 
Einleitung, § 11. 

t This thought, as might be expected, is worked out very thoroughly by 
the best divines of modern Germany; but it belongs to the old schools of 
Hebrew exegesis, or, to speak more correctly, underlies all the Biblical in- 
timation of the future Messiah's person and work. (See the account of the 
Adam Cadmon in Dorner's 'Einleitung to his Christology.') It is not sur- 
prising, when we consider the immense importance of the principle, that the 
followers of opposite and conflicting systems of philosophy should have 
claimed it for their own leaders. The Hegelians were especially anxious to 
pi-ove that in its philosophic form the truth was recognized and taught by 
Hegel. See Goschel, Von Gott, dem Menschen und dem Gottmenschen. 

X OeavOpuTTos, a most pregnant term, used very frequently by the Greek 
Fathers. 

8 



•ytjQ AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

US to give up any part of what jou must admit to be a 
consistent and com]3lete realization of that which you 
profess to recognize as good and beautiful simply, on 
the ground that it is too good, too beautiful, to be 
true."^ We have, as you must confess, full access to the 
ideal sphere in which the soul may expatiate with de- 
light. You cannot wish us to pass over to you, with 
nothing to gain, Vv'ith so much to lose, even in your 
opinion, in our own not less than all. You offer us, in 
fact, nothing but the substitution of moral and intel- 
lectual speculations of the most bev/ildering character, 
in place of difficulties which a simple faith enables a 
sound reason practically to overcome. "We, on the con- 
trary, have every motive to call on you to pass over 
to our side : wdiat you have to sacrifice is a mere no- 
tion, a novel one even in the schools of philosophy, 
as to the incredibility of an external and perfect mani- 
festation of the divine. What you have to gain is the 
realization of the dearest and deepest hopes of human- 
ity — hopes which nothing short of such a realization 
can satisfy and fulfil. 

12. It would be a good thing if our countrymen, 
and especially our younger countrymen, would diS' 
tinctly contemplate the alternative which they must 
in consistency adopt when the claims of the Scriptural 
narrative are confronted with ideologists. We may 
owe something even to the fearless speculators who, 
obscure and perplexing as their writings are in other 
respects, have at least brought this question to a defi- 
nite issue. For young men of active and liberal spirits 
(indeed, for all who venture into the region of specula- 
tive inquiry, for those more especially who hang about 
its outskirts) the chief danger is that they may adopt 
opinions which are intrinsically antagonistic to truth, 
without any suspicion of their tendencies and neces- 
sary results. It is well that such tendencies are at any 
rate brought out distinctly. Some few may possibly 
accept the conclusions to which the speculations lead : 

* Strauss, speaking of the theory in the very imperfect form which was 
given to it by Schleiermacher, calls it a beautiful eflfort of thought. 



EssATlV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. i>ji 

but even for them it may be better that they should 
arrive rapidly at the end, and find by experience its 
barrenness and emptiness. The recoil from the dreary 
void of sceptical negation has been to some, and those 
no ignoble spirits, the first movement towards the re- 
covery of trnth. But tlie great majority of Englishmen 
are extremely unlikely, even for a season, to find any 
resting-place in a system which makes the deepest and 
most practical convictions dependent upon metaphysi- 
cal abstractions, depriving them of the foundation of 
positive objective facts.* Once assured that ideology 
simply means denial of the veracity of the writers who 
bear witness to miraculous facts — of the truth of the 
whole, or of any considerable portion of the book, in 
which it nevertheless recognizes utterances of a divine 
spirit, they will turn aside in contempt from what 
must seem to them a suicidal inconsistency. One great 
characteristic of Englishmen — the characteristic, in fact, 
on which they may justly rest their claims to a fore- 
most (indeed the foremost) position among the repre- 
sentative races of humanity — is the belief in, and the 
love of, positive objective truth. Once convinced of 
the untruthfulness of a writer, no ingenuity of reason- 
ing, no fascination of style, no adaptation of his state- 
ments to their feelings or prejudices, will induce them 
to listen to his words. They may be slow to discern 
the symptoms of untruthfulness, may be deceived and 
misled, but they will have but one short word to 
designate what they are once convinced has no founda-* 

* Such, too, was the state of feeling in Germany. A writer, whose bias 
is latterly opposed to orthodoxy, declares truly that the orthodox reaction 
originated among men connected with public life — leaders of the patriotic 
outburst — that the religious systems of the Berlin schools were too spiritual- 
istic, too thin and fine drawn, too sentimental and indefinite to produce 
practical results. What men wanted was a right, massive, sturdy, popular 
Christianity, such as Luther preached. "In truth there was a deep chasm 
between the new intellectual character (Geistesbildung) presented by the 
leaders in philosophy and poetry, and the wants of the people. See Schwartz, 
* Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie,' p. 67. The whole chapter is in- 
structive, as showing the utter unfitness of Rationalism in any of its forms, 
Idealism included, to act on the moral and spiritual life of the people — that 
is, to do the special and peculiar work of Christianity. A form of religion 
which admits that incapacity stands self-condemned. The arguments of 
Origen against Celsus are particularly worthy of consideration in their bear- 
ings upon this question. See lib. vi. 2, and vii. 59, 60. 



1'72 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay lY. 

tion in fact. The very last position which they will 
admit as possible, or tolerate as defensible, is, that 
truths of infinite import should have been transmitted 
from the divine to the human intelligence by nnve- 
racious witnesses, or through the medium of events dis- 
torted by enthusiasts. The Englishman may be nar- 
row-minded or prejudiced, unapt to deal with abstract 
speculations ; but he has at least had his training,— he 
has been accustomed to weigh evidence, to seek for 
matter of fact truth in the first place, and to satisfy 
himself as to the good faith and correct information of 
those from whom he expects to receive knowledge or 
instruction. One thing with him is fixed and certain ; 
whatever else may be doubtful, this at least is sure — 
a narrative purporting to be one of positive facts, 
which is wholly or in any essential or considerable 
portion untrue, can have no connection with the Di- 
vine, and cannot have any beneficial infiuence upon 
mankind. As for the doctrines which are based upon 
it, or inseparably boimd up with it, they must have 
their origin in another region than that of light. He 
will not allow himself to be entangled in the mazes 
of speculation. Without troubling himself as to the 
direction in which they may lead him, he will stop at 
the threshold : he will say — Before I go one step further, 
let me know what you say to our Lord's miracles — to 
the miracle of miracles, the Resurrection. Is it a fact 
or not ? As for the doctrine, which, as you say, it may 
represent, we may inquire about that hereafter ; but 
let us first know on what we stand — on the shifting 
quicksands of opinion, or on the solid ground of pos- 
itive objective fact. 

13. It may be said that it is unfair to press a man, 
and by urging the consequences of his opinions, to 
drive him from a position in which even for a time he 
may find refuge from utter unbelief. This considera- 
tion would undoubtedly have great weight if the ques- 
tion regarded only the speculative inquirer. Charity 
cannot be carried too far in judging any man's motives, 
in bearing with his perplexities, and putting the most 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. I73 

favourable coiistrnction upon his words : but when a 
man propouuds his opinions publicly, works them up 
into an elaborate system, and commends them by all 
the graces and artifices of rhetoric, his object is evi- 
dently not so much to satisfy his own mind, as to infiu- 
ence the minds of others ; and for their sake it is neces- 
sary to ascertain his meaning, and to show clearly the 
principles upon which his system rests, and the conse- 
quences which it involves. Above all, is this our duty 
when those principles are introduced rather by insinu- 
ation than by direct assertion, and are directly connected 
with the recommendation of disingenuous acts, by 
which the safeguards of religion are nndermined. We 
consider it a fortunate circumstance that, on the first 
appearance of ideology, so much of its true character 
has been disclosed. In order, however, thoroughly to 
comprehend its bearings, and to prove its internal and 
necessary connection with the ultimate principles of 
unbelief, it will be expedient to give- some account of 
its origination and development in Germany. Some 
of the facts which follow are unknown to the gener- 
ality of English readers; they certainly ought to be 
known by all who feel interested in the progress and 
tendencies of Rationalism in its most ingenious and 
subtle form. 

14. It has been already stated that ideology was 
first presented as a distinct and complete system in the 
writings of Strauss. His Life of Jesus is universally 
recognized as the beginning of a new epoch in theolog- 
ical speculations. The writer himself has lately as- 
serted, with characteristic arrogance, that no work of 
any importance has since been written upon any por- 
tion of the evangelical narrative without reference to 
his book. The vaunt, as we shall see, is not an empty 
one. That work did concentrate and systematize all 
that infidelity had previously advanced or suggested 
against the credibility of the Gospels and the whole 
system of Christianity as an objective revelation. The 
destructive criticism of rationalists, and the mysticism 
of Hegel, were brought together ; that to discredit the 



174 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

facts of revelation, this to supply a new foundation for 
the speculations which Strauss proposes as the substi- 
tute for historical Christianity. 

15. By education and circumstances, and also, it 
must be admitted, b}^ some rare and eminent gifts, 
Strauss was qualified for the position he assumed. He 
was brought up at Tiibingen, an nniversity which, in 
in its retention of ancient forms of discipline, still bears 
more resemblance to Oxford than to any institution in 
Germany; and, when he was a student, it was justly 
regarded as the stronghold of Lutheran orthodoxy. 
Among others less widely known, but sound in the 
faith, — such as Storr, Flatt, and Steudel, — Tiibingen 
boasts of the great name of Bengel. In that school 
Strauss learned somewhat of the nature of the princi- 
ples which he was to attack. Under F. C. Baur, since 
known as the most subtle and learned of neologians, 
but whose tendencies were then scarcely suspected, he 
acquired the habit of sceptical investigation, and im- 
bibed a rooted antipathy to what the Germans call 
" supernaturalism" — that is, the recognition of a mirac- 
ulous element in religion. Free from any taint of sen- 
suality, he bore a high character, to which his influence 
among the students and professors may in part be attrib- 
uted. On the other hand, utterly indifferent to the 
tendencies or results of his inquiries, singularly devoid 
of geniality or sympathy, he evinced on all occasions 
a supercilious disregard for feelings which he might 
wound, combined w^ith a total absence of reverence for 
the divine. His intellect was keen and clear ; his nat- 
m-al aptitude for dialectical subtilties was developed 
by intense aj^plication : he had also a power, not com- 
mon in any country, and extremely rare in his own, 
that of presenting the results of his labours in an intel- 
ligible and interesting form, with the advantages of ar- 
tistic arrangement and a perspicuous style. 

16. In the year 1831, Strauss, until then a Repetent 
or assistant tutor at Tiibingen, went to Berlin, at that 
time the centre of all speculative movements in the- 
ology and philosophy. Schleiermacher stood at the 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. 1^5 

head. Few men have exercised a wider or more pow- 
erful influence. His vast learning and vigorous intel- 
lect ; his lively and persuasive eloquence ; above all, 
his peculiar mode of inculcating religious principles, 
attracted many of the noblest and most powerful 
minds. The characteristic of his system was the 
prominence which he gave to religious feeling — sub- 
jective feeling was to him and the most influential of 
his followers the one test both of the importance and 
reality of spiritual truths : and to his teaching may be 
traced that aversion to what is called dogmatism, which 
distinguishes many of our own writers who, without 
adopting all his views, have passed through his school. 
His influence over Strauss, however, depended upon 
other qualities. Schleiermacher combined with a pe- 
culiarly genial and winning sweetness of character, 
and with a dreamy but graceful and attractive senti- 
mentalism, a no less remarkable talent for sarcastic and 
reckless criticism. 'No man was more acute in detect- 
ing flaws, none more unscrupulous in exposing what he 
deemed to be inconsistencies. ]N"one had hitherto goue 
so far in discrediting large portions of the Scriptural 
narrative, or in assailing the authenticity of canonical 
books.* When Strauss came to Berlin, Schleiermacher 

* This statement may seem too harsh. Schwartz, however, a critic who 
has the greatest admiration and even reverence for Schleiermacher, observes 
that the critical processes by which Strauss attempted to overthrow the 
sacred history were learned in the school of Schleiermacher. " Originating 
with Semler and Eichhoru, they had been developed in rationalistic circles, 
and reached their highest point in the labours of De Wette, Schleiermacher, 
and Gieseler." Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, p. 83. A most im- 
portant statement for the young student of German theology. Gieseler him- 
self gives the following account of that great man's principles : — " Schleier- 
macher went very far in his concessions to modern opinion. He admitted 
that the piety of a Pantheist might be identical with that of aMonotheist, and 
reconcilable even with Christianity. That piety, moreover, could coexist 
with the theory which, denying the continuance of personal existence, re- 
gards the common spirit of humanity as the source of individual souls, the 
true living unity, of which alone eternity and immortality can be predicated ; 
individual souls being its transitory actions, or manifestations. For the 
Christian as such there is no guarantee for personal duration, save that which 
is found in the belief of the eternal union of the Divine Essence with the 
human nature in Christ. The historical connection of Christianity with 
Judaism is external, precisely the same as with heathenism — hence he assigns 
to the Old Testament no normal authority. Angels are creatures of the 
imagination — in the idea of the devil he finds an internal contradiction — but 
he consents to retain angels and devils for liturgical use. The resurrection of 



176 -^^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

had been giving a course of lectures on the life of 
Jesus, which are characterized by a friendly critic as 
full of acute combinations and destructive scepticism. 
Those lectures vrere, indeed, the chief attraction which 
drew him thither.^ They gave the strongest im^^ulse 
to his own work of demolition. 

IT. It was not, however, in the system of Schleier- 
macher that Strauss found the true key to his own posi- 
tion. He was abundantly supplied with weapons for 
'attack. Eationalists and sentimentalists had under- 
mined the outworks of revelation : but he saw plainly 
that something more and something different was 
needed to account for the origin of Christianity ; and 
it was perfectly clear to him that the battered and dis- 
figured fabric of what he regarded as rcfere superstition 
could not be demolished and swept away, imless it 
were displaced by a system better calculated to meet 
the recpirements of the human mind. 

It seems strange that he should have fixed upon 
Hegelianism for that purpose ; for Hegel, then in the 
full noontide of his influence, was regarded as the bul- 
wark of orthodox conservatism both in church and 
state. The fundamental doctrines of religion, the dog- 
matic forms of the church, even the most abstruse and 
difficult speculations of theologians and schoolmen, 
were at that very time maintained by professors of the 
school of Hegel, who were recognized by him as faith- 
ful and intelligent expositors of his views. It was be- 
lieved that he had efi'ected a real and permanent recon- 
ciliation between philosophy and religion. Faith and 
knowledge henceforth were to work together in perfect 
harmony ; all apparent contradictions were to be ab- 
sorbed ; all perplexing problems to find a solution in 
the higher sphere of metaphysical abstraction. A new 

the body and the last judgment are to be understood not as positive truths, 
but as the outward representations of general truths. Eternal damnation is 
rejected as inconceivable." — Kirchengeschichte der neuesten Zeit, p. 2-10. 

* See Schwartz, 1. c. Strauss hiniself savs that he procured the MS. of 
the lectures which had been given before his arrival. He points out the dif- 
ference between his own views and those of Schleiermacher, who wished to 
retain, bj help of naturalistic interpretations, the substance of the Gospel 
narration. His statement is quite compatible with that of Schwartz. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. I77 

system of optimism was founded, which acknowledged 
the State not merely as a necessary organization, but as 
the highest realization of the ideal of society, and re- 
jected all factious and democratic tendencies as perni- 
cious errors ; while, in their ecclesiastical tendencies, 
Hegel's principles seemed rather to verge towards Ro- 
manism than towards the dissolution of all formal au- 
thority, which appeared imminent as a development of 
infidelity under the thin disguise of rational Protes- 
tantism. He was, in fact, by taste, habits, and disposi- 
tion a conservative, both as regarded the outward frame- 
work of church and state, and the dogmatic represen- 
tation of religious truths. It may seem strange ; but 
it was a proof of the clear insight and vigorous intel- 
lect of Strauss, that in the fundamental principles of 
that philosopher's system, he discerned the motive 
power which he required to overthrow all which it ap- 
peared to accept so unreservedly and to defend with 
unprecedented success. 

"We can scarcely hope, and will not attempt, to state 
those principles in a clear or even intelligible form ; 
but some of the results, as Strauss apprehended and 
applied them, are practical enough. His exposition, 
moreover, has been justified both by the adhesion of 
a considerable number of those who were once the 
stanchest maintainers of their master's orthodoxy, and 
by the ultimate overthrow of the system itself, which 
is now, in the form which Hegel gave it, altogether 
a thing of the past.* Under the abstruse and cloudy 
statements of that philosopher,f Strauss saw clearly 

* M. Scherer says — " II a fait faillite, et c'est le positivisme qui a pris la 
suite de ses affaires." And elsewhere — " Ce bulle de savon a creve depuis 
longtemps." 

t Hegel taught that the universe is but a continuous evolution of an in- 
finite potentiality ; that the absolute is not found either in the ideal sub- 
stratum, which is not a positive existence, or in matter of fact phenomena, 
which have no permanent reality, but in a perpetual process of self-develop- 
ment. Whatever exists has a necessary but a merely transitory existence. 
The ideal is ever tending to realization, but is never perfectly, and cannot be 
permanently, realized. It was a question among his followers whether he 
regarded Christianity, in the Person of its Founder, as an exception from 
these sweeping conclusions — whether his system was compatible with Theism. 
It seems to me scarcely possible to reconcile many statements in his first 
considerable work (the * Phanomenologie des Geistes') with belief in a per- 

8* 



178 -^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

involved tlie positive denial of the personality of the 
Godhead, the assertion of the phenomenal and evanes- 
cent, the incomplete and inadequate character of all 
existences, the absorption of individnality ; in short, 
a complete system of pantheism, more idealistic than 
any previous development, and at the same time more 
capable of explaining the events of history both profane 
and sacred. 

18. Stranss took some time to prepare a work in 
which he applied these principles to the overthrow of 
Christianity. The 'Life of Jesus' was published in 
1835. It appeared at a period of outward calm ; 'there 
was a singular cessation just then of controversy, a 
general feeling of security. Hegel had been dead four 
years. He had departed, so to speak, in the odour of 
orthodoxy. Marheineke, Daub, and Goschel were recog- 
nized as true expositors of his system, and as sound de- 
fenders of the faith. Schleiermacher, too, was gone. 
His followers claimed for him the merit of having de- 
stroyed the older forms of rationalism, which had sunk 
into utter contempt. E"eander at Berlin, Tholuck at 
Halle, Steudel at Tubingen, and a host of theologians 
of various shades of opinion, ranging from orthodoxy 
to neology, but animated for the most part by deep 
Christian sympathies, occupied the professorial chairs ; 
while a strong and united band of men, sound in the 
old Bible orthodoxy, wrought more directly upon the 
popular mind through the pulpit. The effect of the 
publication of Strauss's book is indescribable. Friends 
and enemies cannot find words strong enough to express 
the consternation, the horror and indignation of all who 

sonal God. It is certain that no Christian theologians now accept the appli- 
cations of his general principles to Christian dogmas. Chalybseus admits 
the " comfortless results" of the whole system. On the attempts of Mar- 
heineke and Goschel, some valuable remarks may be read in Gieseler's 
* Kirchengeschichte d. n. Z.,' p. 242. Strauss also gives a clear account of 
the disputes between the scholars of Hegel in his ' Glaubenslehre/ p. 520 flf. 
It is, however, certain that Hegel wished to maintain religion — that he re- 
garded the establishment of Theism as the highest problem and work of 
philosophy, and utterly detested all sceptical and destructive criticism, 
especially that of Schleiermacher — an aversion extending even to purely 
secular writers, as Niebuhr. His last work, on the Philosophy of Religion, 
is full of beautiful and devout aspirations : whether they are consistent with 
his philosophy or not, is another question. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. X79 

retained a vestige of reverence for religion. An electric 
shock running through all bosoms, a trumpet sounding 
the signal for a conflict for life and death, an earthquake 
shaking the foundations of all human hopes ; such are the 
terms which historians use in speaking of the shock."^* 
Our own time has lately had an example of the effect 
which is produced when men known only as able, indus- 
trious scholars, of unspotted character, and exemplary in 
all personal relations, come forward as the opponents 
of truths which they are bound to uphold. The excite- 
ment and panic, if panic it can be called which brought 
hosts of combatants to the front of the battle, had then 
a further justification in the talents, unity of purpose, 
straightforward audacity of the author — in his thorough 
mastery of all the weaj)ons of attack, in the coherence 
of his philosophical principles — principles, as we have 
shovm already, accepted by multitudes of thoughtful 
men — above all in the state of the public mind, shaken 
by rationalism, distrustful of its guides, unable to com- 
prehend the position of the recognized defenders of 
religion, and tossed to and fro by conflicting systems 
of doctrine and interpretation. Strauss was at least a 
brave and open foe, showed his true colours, and nailed 
them to the mast, and met every attack manfully, — 
open as he certainly was to the imputation of making 
a dishonest use of a position entrusted to him for the 
defence of Christianity. 

19. In that work Strauss had two distinct objects. 
The first was to set aside all supernatural events, to prove 
that the Divine did not manifest itself in the manner 
related, and that the actual occurrences were not di- 
vine.f The other was to set up a system in which all 
that Christianity attempts to accomplish should be dis- 
entangled from its imperfect form, and developed, by 

* Compare Schwartz, Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, and M. E. 
Scherer, Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 1861 ; and Gieseler. Strauss himself 
speaks with great exultation of the shrieks of believers. See the introduction 
to his second edition. 

t Introduction, § 1. See also his Streitschriften, part iii., p. 59. He gives 
a full account of the original plan of his work (showing that the second part 
was that to which he attached most importance) in the treatise ' Verhaltniss 
der Hegel' schen Philosophie zur Kritik.' 



180 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

a pliilosopliical process, from universal and permanent 
truths. 

20. In the first part of the work Strauss collected all 
the objections which a remorseless criticism had raised 
against the historical veracity of the sacred writers : 
he completed them, gave them a sharper point and 
keener edge, combined them in a systematic form, and 
reduced them to a fundamental thought."^ De Wette 
had already laid down the position, that all men of 
cultivated minds rejected the miraculous narratives of 
the Bible, and that the only question was how to ac- 
count for their origin.f Strauss addressed himself to 
that question. First laying down far more broadly the 
general position, that miracles are a jyrioi'i incredible, 
on the ground that the workings of the Divine in the 
world proceed in accordance with fixed, unvarying, 
and universal laws, -which utterly exclude the possi- 
bility of miracles, X he refers all accounts of supernatu- 
ral interventions to one origin — that of Myths. Here 
again he adopts what scej)tics or infidels had previously 
suggested. Semler had applied to the account of 
Samson and Esther the saying of Heyne, that all the his- 
tory and philosophy of primitive antiquity originated 
in myths. Yater, and still more decidedly De Wette, 
had advocated the mythical interpretation of a large 
portion of the Old Testament§ history. But, as Strauss 
complains, that system had been applied inconsistently 
and timidly even to the Old Testament, and had stood 
side by side with naturalistic interpretations, while few 
had ventured to bring it to bear upon any portion of 
the Gospel narrative. Yet even here the way had been 
prepared. Schleiermacher had not hesitated to call the 
history of the Temptation a myth. Gabler, and others 

* Schwartz, *■ Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie,' p. 104. 

t That position was taken in the work which in Germany, some thirty 
years ago, was put into my hands as an introduction to the study of the 
Hebrew Scriptures. 

X Strauss uses precisely the same language as Baden Powell. See his 
Introduction, vol. i. p. 71 of the English translation. In p. 87, § 16, he gives 
the marks by which the unhistorical character of a narrative may be a priori 
demonstrated — the principal is the impossibility of any arbitrary act of inter- 
position by the absolute cause. 

§ Kritik der Masaischen Geschichte, quoted by Strauss. Introduction, § 8. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCKIPTION. 131 

of his scliool, held that all portions of the narrative 
which involved angelic appearances had the essential 
characteristics of myth. Some theologians had gone so 
far as to bring the details, first of the Nativity, and 
then of the Eesnrrection, under the same category. 
The barriers had been thrown down, and all that re- 
mained for Strauss to do was to carry out the principle 
consistently into the whole structure of the I^ew Testa- 
ment. To use his own words : " Others had driven 
through the grand portal of myths into the evangelical 
history, and had passed out again by the same ; but 
as for all the intermediate portions, they were contented 
to pursue the crooked and laborious paths of natural 
interpretation." He left himself no portion of our 
Lord's life untouched. He saw too clearly the internal 
coherence of all its parts ; he discerned the unity of 
the principles which underlie all its phenomena : all 
or nothing must be admitted. Rejecting with disdain 
the subterfuges of rationalist and semi-rationalist, he 
would not, as he says, set up the authority of one 
Evangelist against another. The testimony of one is 
worth as much, or to speak more correctly, is worth 
as little as the others.* A helium omnium contra 
omnes is waged ; from beginning to end he finds no 
single spot of firm historical ground, scarcely any 
mixture of ascertainable fact, amid the legendary and 
mythical representations.f 

Strauss enters, of course, fully into the investiga- 
tion of myths,:}: which had already been classified under 
three heads ; the historical, which confound the natu- 
ral and supernatural ; the philosophical, which clothe in 

* Schwartz, Zur Geschichte, p. 110. 

t To allow time for such a transmutation of history, which, as all historians 
agree, is only possible in times when letters are unknown or unused, when 
events are transmitted by ignorance and superstition, Strauss was driven to 
the theory, that all the Gospel narratives were the product of the second cen- 
tury, a theory which is admitted universally, even by unchristian critics, to 
be irreconcilable with facts : with the failure of that theory the whole myth- 
ical system collapses. Dr. Arnold, who had not read the book, judging of it 
merely from a review, saw, of course, this point. " The idea of men writing 
mythic histories between the time of Livy and Tacitus, and St. Paul mistaking 
such for realities ! " Life, ii. p. 58. 

X L. J,, Introduction, p. 26. 



182 ^'^'^^ TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

the garb of historical narrative some thought or idea 
of the time ; and the poetical, in which the original 
idea is almost obscured by the veil which the fancy of 
the poet has woven aroimd it. All tliese he holds to 
be blended in various proportions in the Gospel narra- 
tive — the great sonrce of all the mythical embellish- 
ments being the prepossessions of the countrymen and 
followers of onr Lord touching the person and works 
of the expected Messiah : the next source being that 
peculiar impression which was left by the personal 
character, actions, and fate of Jesus, and which served 
to modify the Messianic idea in the minds of the people. 
21. The residuum from this system is thus stated 
by one* who is far from an unfriendly critic. The 
myth has eaten into the very heart of the narrative. 
There remains but a scanty framework of the life of Jesus. 
That He was brought up in Nazareth, was baptized by 
John ; that He formed disciples, and taught in various 
districts of Palestine ; that He opposed everywhere the 
outwardness of pharisaism, and proclaimed the Messi- 
anic kingdom ; that at last he succumbed to the hatred 
and envy of the pharisaic factionf and died upon the 
Cross — such, according to Strauss, is the sum total of 
facts, which the ideas and aspirations of early Christen- 
dom enveloped in a tissue of significant legends and 
devout imaginings. Of the discourses of our Lord, a 
small solid kernel, as he thinks, can be discerned with 
certainty. Such, for instance, is the Sermon on the 
Mount. The sayings of' Jesus, according to him, were 
so pregnant and forcible, had so strong a hold upon 
men's minds in their condensed gnomic form, that they 
were preserved in great part even in the flood of oral 
tradition. Even this seems, upon second thoughts, too 
much for him to admit. Wrenched from their natural 
connection, dislodged from their original site, they re- 
main like boulders, objects of vague wonder or super- 

* Schwartz. See also Scherer, Kevue des Deux Mondes. 

t Even this is a distortion of history. Caiaphas and his party were Sad- 
ducees; a fact which later writers of the Tubingen school hare found impos- 
sible to reconcile with their theory of the origin of the Gospels. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. 183 

stitious legends, until tlieir true origin and meaning 
are ascertained by philosophic ingennity and research. 

22. And yet Strauss professes, and may be assumed 
actually to believe, that he retains the essential truths 
of Christianity. The last portion of his book, which 
he certainly regarded as the most important, is intended 
to draw out the eternal ideas which underlie this 
strange tissue of legend and myth. The supernatural 
nativity of Christ, His miracles. His resurrection and 
ascension, remain ideal truths — utterly separated as 
they are from objective facts. Christ, indeed, in His 
concrete personality, disappears from the system of 
the great teacher of Ideology. No individual does or 
can adequately represent, much less embody, absolute 
realities. But the Church was guided by a true in- 
stinct when, in the Person of Jesus, she found an ex- 
pression of those realities. In Him was manifested 
more perfectly than in any individual that which is 
the ultimate and substantial principle of all religion, 
the unity of God and man. It is actually startling to 
find how the versatile and imaginative intellect of 
Strauss* can discern the blessedness and sublimity, 
the encouragement and consolation of the thoughts 
which the early Church derived from the orthodox 
view of Christ. Standing from without, he sees far 
more clearly than many who profess to believe the 
Gospel, the internal coherence of its highest doctrines. 
Only, as Strauss teaches, the true meaning of those 
doctrines remained to be discovered in the light of the 
philosophy of the Absolute.f That alone suj^plies the 
key to the whole system of Christology. Instead of 
an individual we have an idea. In an individual the 
properties and functions which the Church attributes 
to Christ contradict themselves : in the idea of the race 
they perfectly agree. Humanity is the union of the 
two natures — God become man ; it is the worker of 
miracles, the sinless existence ; for sin belongs to the 
individual, not to the race. It is Humanity that dies, 

* See the concluding Dissertation, § 145. 

+ Concluding Dissertation, § 151, p. 437, vol. iii. English translation. 



184 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

rises, ascends into Heaven. By faith in this Christ, 
that is, in his own hnman nature, man is justified be- 
fore God. 

23. Is this the last word of the system ? It seems 
to go far enough. Yet Strauss had more to say. In 
a later work,* he boldly clears away all remaining 
prejudices. The world is not merely one with God — 
an ever changing, ever progressing manifestation of the 
Divine, but God has Himself no personality, no con- 
scious Being. Man had taken the throne of Christ. 
He seats himself ultimately in the throne of the Abso- 
lute, which first attains to consciousness, to personal 
existence, in humanity.f The individual is nothing — 
a mere phenomenal and transitional evolution ; the abso- 
lute is nothing — a mere potentiality never realized or 
realizable. Empty abstraction swallows up all idea and 
fact, the Divine and human, in one universal void. 

24. Such is Ideology in the mind of its ablest, its 
most honest and consistent exponent. The storm pro- 
duced by such a w^ork may be conceived. All the 
leaders of German thought were in a tumult of excite- 
ment; the first object of those, between whose systems 
and that of Strauss there appeared to be a logical con- 
nection, was to shake ofi" the responsibility. Schleier- 
macher's friends first rushed to the rescue, and pointed 
out the absolute antagonism between the genial and 
loving spirit of their chief, and the reckless audacity, 
the irreverence, and bitterness of the intruder. Hege- 
lians were, of course, vehement in disavowing the priii' 
ciples and the consequences. Yet, as we have seen, 
Strauss did but use the weapons which had been forged 
for him. He scarcely went further than De Wette, on 
the one hand, in historical scepticism, or differed from 
him only in the consistency and completeness of his 
application of the same critical principles. Strauss 
might even claim Schleiermacher's own authority for 

* The ' Dogmatik,' or ' Die Christliche Glaubenslehre,' published 1840,1841. 

t " Gott is nicht Person, Er wird es in der unendlichen Reihe der men- 
schlichen Subjecte." See Schwartz, p. 218; and Strauss, Glaubenslehre, 
pp. 502-524. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. I35 

the denial of the possibility of miracles, although, by a 
glorious inconsistency, that great man accepted as a 
Christian truth what he could find no place for in his 
philosophical system. On the other hand, so far as his 
application of the Hegelian theory was concerned, 
daringly blasphemous as he may seem, he w^as soon 
outstripped by even more reckless infidels. In fact, 
other symptoms soon removed all doubt as to the ten- 
dency of Hegelian forms of thought. Frederic Kichter, 
a bookseller of Breslau, had already published in 1833 
— two years before the appearance of Strauss's 'Life 
of Jesus' — a work in which he proclaimed a new Gos- 
pel, as he styled it, that of eternal death.* His argu- 
ment, in the opinion of very competent judges, was a 
legitimate deduction from Hegel's theory of individ- 
uality, though the book and the author were over- 
whelmed in a general outburst of indignation. Later 
and more consistent professors of that school did not 
hesitate to call the condemnation of Richter, coming as 
it did from Hegelians, a literary assassination. Again, 
one of the most thoroughgoing adherents of Hegel, Bruno 
Bauer, a writer who had made himself conspicuous by 
his heady arrogance in the cause of orthodoxy, now 
turning round with a sudden revulsion, poured forth a 
stream of writings, in which the facts and doctrines of 
Christianity were treated with a blasphemous insolence 
scarcely paralleled in modern days. The writings of 
Bauer and Richter, however, were easily disavowed; 
even the opponents of Hegel hesitated to make the 
calm conservative philosopher responsible for such 
results. 

25. Two years after the appearance of Strauss's work 
another application of Hegel's principles was develop- 
ed, which, though far less startling and urged in a far 
different spirit, produced a deeper "and more durable 
sensation on the Continent. B. Bothe,f sub-director of 

* Die Lelire von den letzfen Dingen. Gieseler says that many Hegelians 
blamed Richter not for the doctrine, but for its publication, '■'■Jor discovering 
a secret of tTie scliool.'" ' Kircbengeschichte dor n. Z.,' p. 245. 

t Now Professor at Heidelberg. His book is entitled ' Die Anfange der 
Christlichen Kirche, und ihrer Verfassung.' 



186 -^^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

the theological college at Wittenberg, published, in 
1837, his treatise on the origin and constitution of 
the Christian Church. Rothe is in all respects a most 
remarkable man ; in originality and independence of 
thought he stands almost alone among German theolo- 
gians ; his personal piety and hearty acceptance of the 
living truths of religion are undoubted.'^ Few of our 
own later writers have gone so far — none have gone 
farther, in defending, both by d priori arguments 
and historical evidence, the apostolical origin of Episco- 
pacy, the unity and authority of the primitive Church. 
It seemed as though the conservation of Hegel had 
found a perfect exponent. Yet, strange as it may 
appear, the conclusion at which he arrives, following 
out, as the keenest critics f admit, the principles of his 
master, is that the Christian Church is but a temporary 
institution destined to be absorbed by the State ; % in 
which, like all true Hegelians, § he sees no mere 
system of mutual defence, or institution in which the 
energies of individuals may be freely developed, but 
the highest product of reason, the supreme development 
of humanity, — in a word, the moral world realized 
and organized. The views of Eothe are altogether too 
subtle, and indeed too elevated, to reach the general 
mind in the form which he gave them : his State is an 
ideal one ; his hope of the realization of his theory 
depends upon his belief in a future personal manifesta- 
tion of the Saviour ; but the necessary results of his 
reasoning were clearly discerned by thinking men, and 
practical inferences were readily drawn. He recog- 
nizes himself w^ith calm satisfaction what he believes 
to be early and progressive symptoms of decline and 
disintegration in the Church, the steady progress of 

* A very strong testimony is borne to his piety by Rudolf Stier in the in- 
troduction to his new edition of the ' Reden der Apostel,' 18G1, p. viii. He 
says of him — " Dessen innerstes Glaubensleben ich wohl kenne." In some 
points Rothe shows a strong tendency to Romanism, and speaks of Mahler's 
' Symbolik' in terms of almost unqualified eulogy. 

t For instance, E. Scherer in the ' Revue des' Deux Mondes,' p. 849, Feb. 
1861 ; and Schwartz, * Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie.' 

X " Der vollendete Staat schliesst die Kirche schlechthin aus." — 'Anfange/ 
p. 47. 

§ See his note, p. 13, where he collects Hegel's definitions of the State. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEirTION. lQ^J 

cncroacliments on the part of the State ; and, in con- 
nection with outward changes, an internal modification 
of opinions, feelings, and principles, tending towards 
a final identification of the secular and religious, the 
natural and the Divine. He does not hesitate to as- 
sert that the religious life itself must find its true and 
satisfactory realization, not in the Church but in the 
State.* Though resting on far other grounds, there is 
a remarkable resemblance between his theory as well 
as the arguments by which it is maintained, and that 
of our own Arnold. f The supremacy of the State in 
all matters, both of discipline and doctrine, is the 
rightful and legitimate development of Christianity ; 
it decides what shall be taught, and how it shall be 
taught ; and in the mean time it treats, and has a right 
to treat, the national Church, as no less properly an 
organ of the national life than a magistracy or a legis- 
lative estate. 

26. The philosophy of ideology, thus consistently 
carried out by writers of very different feelings and 
principles, leaves man without a church, without a 
Saviour, without a living soul. There remained, how- 
ever, still a sort of profession of religion, a religion of 
vague, dreary abstractions, but still, such as it was, an 
element in which philosophers might find some ma- 
terials for the religious sentiment, while the common 
herd might be guided by the retention of the old doc- 
trinal forms. That delusion was soon dissipated. 
Feuerbach took up the argument where Strauss left it, 

* p. 51. 

t Dr. Arnold, of course, did not derive his opinions directly from Rothe, 
whose work he read in 1838. In a letter written that year to Chevalier Bun- 
sen, he expresses his entire agreement with Rothe in his theory as to the 
identity of Church and State ; but, as might be expected, rejects as entirely 
bis conclusions touching the apostolical origin of episcopacy. See * Life,' 
&c., ii. p. 105. It will be remembered that the Chevalier Bunsen, with whom 
Arnold says distinctly that he agrees more thoroughly than any of his friends, 
was deeply imbued with Hegel's principles, and more especially with their 
application to the relations between the Church anairthe State. There can 
be little doubt that he gave the first impulse to Arnold's mind upon this sub- 
ject, or at least confirmed it in the direction which it took after the reaction 
from what he somewhere calls his Oxford Toryism. The numerous and pe- 
culiar coincidences between Arnold and his German prototypes can other- 
wise scarcely be accounted for. He learned German somewhat late in life. 



188 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

and drew from it the inevitable conclusion, that man 
himself is the only proper object for the reverence and 
the worship which had hitherto been directed to the 
idea of a God. Theology was thns converted to an- 
thropology. Instead of loving God, men are to love 
one anotlier. Sacraments will disappear, but then the 
eucharist will be found in wholesome meals ; baptism, 
in the healthy use of cold baths I Natural science will 
take the place of religious, moral, and metaphysical 
speculation. Atheism thus stood out in its bareness 
and barrenness — yet not even then in its utter hateful- 
ness. It remained for a numerous school of philo- 
sophical radicals to get rid of the last vestiges of 
superstition. Feuerbach recognized the virtues of un- 
selfishness, courage, truth ; ^ he was an admirer of the 
higher developments of genius, in science, literature, 
and art. He speaks of humanity as a real being. A 
whole host of writers soon sprang up who rejected all 
such delusions with utter contempt ; they saw clearly 
that they had no meaning disjoined from the religious 
element, and heaped upon himself the contumelious 
epithets which he had unsparingly applied to his pre- 
decessors. The dogmas of socialism and communism 
were preached with the wildest fanaticism ; f poets, 
politicians, socialists, and natural philosophers came 
forward to demand the extirpation of all faith, to de- 
nounce the belief in the invisible as the root of all 
human weakness and misery, to proclaim the sacred 
law of egotism — the religion of the flesh ; and for a 
time they seemed to have succeeded. They appealed to 
man's strongest passions ; they appealed also to some 
deep principles. It was felt that the religion preached 

* This is too favourable a view. In his poems, which, like the ' Thalia' of 
Arius, are intended to popularize his tenets, his cynicism is revolting. In 
his axioms he lays down the principle — Thy first duty is to do good to thy- 
self. 

t See Schwartz, ' Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie,' pp. 227, 240, 242. 
It must be noted that Schwartz and Scherer (who takes precisely the same 
view — see ' Revue des Deux Mondes,' Feb. 1861, p. 851) are ultra liberals. 
Schwartz names Herwegh, Ruge, Marr, Voght, &c., as leaders in this new 
crusade. Gaspard Schmidt, better known by the assumed name of Stirner, 
was, perhaps, the most influential writer. Gieseler, 1. c, pp. 30 and 275, 
may be consulted. 



E83AYIV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 189 

by the professors of all schools tainted by rationalism 
or by ideology was a farce, a delusion, a fraud; the 
materialists carried the day, took the lead in the rev- 
olutionary movement of 18^8, and suddenly, to their 
own amazement, found themselves triumphant amidst 
the ruins of Church and State. 

27. A long and powerful reaction followed. Utterly 
worn out, unmasked, and confounded, ideology, togeth- 
er with the metaphysical speculations with which it 
was connected, sank into obscurity and contempt. The 
very last thing to be expected was that it should have 
been transplanted into a soil of all apparently the most 
uncongenial— that it should be offered to Englishmen 
as a useful help in the interpretation of the Scriptures. 
A very brief summary of points distinctly advanced, or 
undeniably suggested, by some of the latest advocates 
of the system in England will show the fundamental 
identity of principles between them and the German 
ideologists ; although we gladly admit that, whether 
withheld by reverence, or by fear of offending men of 
all shades of religious opinion, not to speak of legal 
penalties and disqualifications, few among us have ven- 
tured to present the most offensive insinuations ; none 
have dared to apply the principles to the whole sub- 
stance of the Scriptural narrative. 

28. The doctrine of personal annihilation, of the 
absorption of the individual consciousness in the infi- 
nite Spirit — a doctrine, be it noted, which is distinctly 
proclaimed among ourselves by Freethinkers, and di- 
rectly based upon Pantheism, or a spurious Theism—is 
not of course preached, nor is it likely to be preached, 
by any one who cares to obtain or retain a hold upon 
the attention of English Christians ; but it finds an echo, 
a partial expression, what sounds like a preparation. 
Divested of what is most repulsive in form, the princi- 
ple is insinuated, the way paved for its reception. Every 
attempt to get rid of the idea of individual responsibili- 
ty, to exempt any considerable portion of mankind from 
the universal law of retribution, is a step, and a very 
decided step, towards the denial of the continuity of 



190 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

personal consciousness. A nearer approximation to the 
scepticism of the Ideologists could perhaps hardly be 
made than that which we find in tlie suggestion, that, 
after some possible state of new probation for rudimen- 
tary spirits, for germinal souls — after the completion of 
the sublunary office of the Christian Church — all, both 
small and great, may find a refuge in the bosom of the 
universal Parent to eepose, or to be quickened into 
higher life.* 

29. We have seen how nearly the theories of the 
Church coincide. As a function of the State, destined 
to be absorbed (and if such its destiny, surely the sooner 
the better) in that institution, it ought, of course, to 
concern itself exclusively with the ethical development 
of its members. t Rothe, indeed, looked for such ab- 
sorption only when the State should be thoroughly 
penetrated with Christian doctrine, transformed and 
glorified by Christian principles — when its ideal should 
be realized under the government of its head. Taking 
lower, more matter of fact and practical grounds — free, 
as it would almost seem, from the religious preposses- 
sions which biassed the German thinker, English writ- 
ers are found to advocate the immediate completion 
of the process. "Speculative doctrines" — that is, all 
dogmatic teaching — "should be left to philosophical 
schools. " "The ministry of the Church is to be regarded 
simply as a function of the national life." Divested of 
its special doctrines, its creeds, and articles, and all 
peculiar manifestations of a divine life, the Church 
could of course be little or nothing more than an instru- 
ment for developing the moral character of the nation. if 
We are distinctly told concerning " the doctrines of an 
isolated salvation, the reward, the grace bestowed on 

* See E. and R., p. 206 ; and compare Jowett on Romans, vol. ii. p. 489, 
t There is a radical difference between this theory and that of our Re- 
formers, as stated by Hooker. The latter proceeded on the assumption that 
the State accepts the doctrines taught by the Church. " How should the 
Church remain by personal subsistence divided from the Commonweal, 
when the whole Commonweal doth believe ? " " The truth is that the Church 
and the Commonweal are names which import things really different ; but 
those things are accidents, and such accidents as may, and always should, 
lovingly dwell together in one subject." — * Ecclesiastical Polity,' Book viii. 
X E. and R., p. 196. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 291 

one's own labours, the undisturbed repose, the crown 
of glory, in w^hich so many have no share, the finality 
of the sentence on both sides — that reflections on such 
expectations as these make stubborn martyrs, or sour 
professors, but not good citizens.'^'' ^ If so, these doc- 
trines, which, invidiously as they are here stated, are, 
rightly understood, the very life of Christianit}^, must 
be discountenanced ; even if for a time tolerated of the 
State, they must be discarded altogether, when it is 
once fully awakened to the consciousness of its true 
relations to the Church. 

30. Still clearer, less capable of being explained 
away or denied, is the agreement of the English ideolo- 
gists with the fundamental principles of- their German 
teachers. Ideology proceeds from the d^i'iori assump- 
tion that all miraculous interventions are impossible, 
since the Divine, whether conscious or unconscious, 
personal or impersonal, does not and cannot, without 
self-contradiction, violate its own laws. All the school 
in England more or less distinctly concur in the elimi- 
nation of the supernatural element from Scripture. The 
least advanced represent it as a serious hindrance to 
the reception of Christian truth by men of cultivated 
intelligence. The German master adopted and gave a 
new and keener point to all detailed objections to nar- 
ratives involving that element: the same course is 
pursued in numerous passages of the " Essays and 
Reviews." f 

With regard to myths, the special characteristic of 
ideology, one writer at least cannot be open to Strauss's 
charge of inconsistency. He has not merely entered 
into the fields of Scriptural history through the portal 
of the myth and passed out again leaving the main 
facts untouched. :j: The incarnation of our Lord, His 
descent from David, the circumstances of His nativity, 
His temptation, transfiguration. His most remarkable 
miracles, including those attested by all the Evangelists, 

* Here we seem to hear Rothe, p. 54. 

t E. and R., pp. 179, 180. See Archdeacon Sinclair's Charge, 1861. 

X E. and R., p. 202. 



192 -^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay IT. 

— nearly all, if not all, the grounds for an '' historical 
faith" are referred substantially to " an ideal origin." 
As for the Old Testament, we are told that " previous 
to the time of the divided kingdom, Jewish history 
contains little that is thoroughly reliable." Its miracu- 
lous events may be taken as parable, poetry, legend, 
or allegory — that is, simply as myths. The German 
saw plainly enough that, in order to find time and place 
for the development of myths, the authenticity and 
genuineness of the historical records must be denied. 
He scarcely went farther than a writer who speaks 
coolly of " links deficient in the traditional records of 
events " which are related by St. Matthew and all the 
Evangelists. • 

A crucial test of a man's feelings towards the Per- 
son of Christ Himself is undoubtedly supplied by his 
reception or denial of the Gospel of St. John. The 
early rationalists rejected it on the ground that it is 
inconsistent with the simpler, more accurate represen- 
tations of Christ in the other Gospels. The modern 
neologians hold that it is the product of the higher 
development of the Christian consciousness in the post- 
Apostolic age. According to the school of pantheistic 
rationalism, aptly and truly designated the modern 
gnosticism, the representation of the Saviour in that 
Gospel is too true, that is,, too perfect an embodiment 
of the ideal, to be historical. But of all hyi^otheses, 
the most oft'ensive, the least supported by any shadow 
of evidence, is that which connects the origin of the 
Gospel with the gnostic heresy,* and brings down its 
date to the year l4o. That hypothesis is noticed with- 
out an expression of indignation by one writer, who in 
his own name expressly asserts that there is no proof 
that St. John gives his voucher as an eye and ear wit- 
ness of all that is related in his Gospel. Strauss de- 
manded no more than this. Here is a ttov arco for the 
subversion of all positive evidence of historical Chris- 

* Thus Ililgeufeld. See a brief summary of opinions in Lange's Bibel- 
werk, iv. p. 20, an excellent work, which will meet the requirements of many 
students. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. I93 

tianity. The mythical process has free play ; and it is 
only a question of time, of discretion in meddling with 
stubborn prejudices, how soon and how far the objective 
facts of an external positive revelation may be rejected, 
how the doctrines themselves may be remoulded, under 
the supreme and ultimate authority of the natural con- 
science, into accordance with the requirements of an 
enlightened age. 

31. The question of course arises — how is it pos- 
sible that men of honour holding such opinions can re- 
tain, or endure, their position as ministers and teachers 
of a Church, which, liberal as it undoubtedly is in 
dealing with all questions about which believers in a 
positive revelation may conscientiously cliffer, has no 
less certainly pronounced a clear and decisive sentence 
upon each and all the points controverted or denied by 
Ideologists ? That the difficulty is felt is sufficiently 
obvious. The principal object of the only treatise in 
which the leading principles of this form of neology 
have been distinctly commended by a minister of the 
Church of England, is to justify the conduct of him- 
self and those who maintain the same views. In this 
part of his undertaking he has been supplied with 
w^eapons from the same foreign armoury. In the writ- 
ings of all schools of rationalism and neology, a promi- 
nent place is assigned to the vindication of absolute 
liberty of sceptical speculation, not merely for students, 
but for professors of theology. We need not, however, 
trace the connection."^ That is of little moment. The 
arguments in this case have at least the merit of being 
intelligible and practical. Whether the Church has at 
present, and has had from the beginning, safeguards 
to preserve her doctrines from corruption — whether she 
has a right, and has exercised the right, to exact from 
all her ministers a pledge that so long as they retain 
her commission they will deliver those doctrines in 

* The history of the struggle of Rationalists, more especially the Licht- 
freunde, partisans or followers of Strauss, to get rid of all doctrinal tests, the 
Creeds included, is given by Gieseler, who, though differing from them in 
important points, sympathizes with them to some extent in that desire. See 
* BLirchengeschichte d. n. Z,,' pp. 250 and 263. 
9 



194 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

their integrity to the people — whether the act of sub- 
scription by which the ministers give such pledge 
involves a moral, or a mere legal obligation — such 
questions stand upon indej^endent grounds, and may be 
discussed without any reference to the sources from 
which the arguments we have to consider may, or may 
not, be derived. 

32. In this controversy the first point must needs be 
to ascertain the practice of the Apostles as recorded or 
intimated in the 'New Testament, and in the next place 
the practice of the Church in various periods of its de- 
velopment ; the most important, in a general point of 
view, being that critical epoch which terminated the 
first struggle with heathenism. Scarcely secondary is 
the position taken by our own Church, when it thor- 
oughly investigated all points of principle and organi- 
zation at the time of the Reformation — a position 
retained without any substantial modification at the 
present day. 

33. With regard to the first point, the ingenuity 
and disingenuousness of those who deny the propriety 
of doctrinal limitations are equally conspicuous. The 
subject is introduced, so to speak, casually, and dis- 
posed of with little intimation of its surpassing impor- 
tance. If the Apostles* enforced a rule of faith, and 
made the teaching of sound doctrine an absolute and 
universal condition of holding office in the Church, the 
principle is of course decided, whatever difficulty may 
be felt at any time about its practical application. 
JSTow, the first impression made upon every thoughtful 
reader of the New Testament is undoubtedly, that the 
whole system of Christian morals, most especially as 
concerns those characteristic peculiarities which dis- 
tinguish the Christian from the heathen moralist, is not 
merely interwoven with the external facts and positive 
doctrines of Christianity, but is altogether based upon 
them, and derives from them its sanctions, its power, its 
life. The manifestation of the Divine life in man is a 
■s'eflexion and efflux from the manifestation of God in 

* See, e. g., 2 Timothy i. 13, 14; ii. 2, '.ii. 10, 14. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. 295 

Christ. The understanding and heart, the spiritual 
and the moral nature of man, are equally under the 
dominion and control of truths, which man has indeed 
a natural and inherent capacity for apprehending when 
set before him, but which, in the actual state of his 
faculties, he is certainly unable to discover. Those 
truths are given in revelation in the two-fold form of 
facts and doctrines, equally positive, equally indispen- 
sable to the development of the spiritual man. The 
denial or perversion of either excludes a man from the 
benefits of the revelation — a result which follows of 
necessity from the very notion of a revelation, for why 
should truth be revealed but to be accepted ? We are 
not at present concerned with the question how far 
such result is reconcileable with the Divine attributes, 
or we might observe that the denial of what God has 
revealed must needs involve some penalty in beings 
responsible for the use of their faculties ; nor do we 
touch the case of those to whom the revelation has not 
been given ; Charity feels no need of speculations con- 
cerning those whom she leaves in faith and hope to the 
mercy of their Maker. We are not confining the 
effects of the atonement, which may, and doubtless do, 
extend far beyond the sphere of our contemplation ; 
but simply indicate the limits within which its full 
effects are experienced — limits undoubtedly coexten- 
sive with its reception by the intellect and heart. 
Christ made confession of faith in Himself, and in the 
truths which He proclaimed, the condition of salva- 
tion. The Apostles, guided by His Spirit, exacted a 
declaration of belief in those truths as a preliminary 
condition of admission to the Church, full in every 
case in proportion to the capacities of their hearers 
and their opportunities of knowing the truth, fullest 
and most explicit in the case of those whom they ap- 
pointed to the work of the ministry. If so, the con- 
clusion is obvious, that the Church would cease to be a 
Church if she commissioned any to teach in her own 
and in her Master's name, when they are at direct issue 
with herself upon points which from the beginning 



196 ^I^S TO FAITH, [Essay IV. 

have been held by those who denied, as well as by 
those who accepted them, to pertain to the very foun- 
dations of the faith. 

34. That position, however, clear as are the prin- 
ciples on which it rests, is now for the lirst time assailed ; 
not indeed directly, but by implication. We are told 
generally, that whereas the Apostles enjoin the inflic- 
tion of the last penalty, that of excommunication, for 
moral turpitude, they deal with speculative questions, 
even those wdiich touch fundamental doctrines, simply 
by the way of controversy. The case selected is that 
of the fornicator at Corinth, w^iich is contrasted with 
that of heretics who denied a corporeal resurrection. 
"With regard to the former there is no question. The 
proceeding of St. Paul in that case is, of course, of 
the highest importance as a proof of the existence and 
enforcement of disciplinarian powers in the Apostles, 
and in the Church, whose rulers were reproved for not 
having exercised them without St. Paul's intervention. 
It might be pointed out that the offence then punished 
consisted most probably in the infringement of a posi- 
tive precept, which, though recognized by the moral 
instincts of heathendom, was first distinctly promul- 
gated by the Apostolic council at Jerusalem ;* and 
with reference to other controverted matters, that the 
circumstances under which the sentence was pro- 
nounced would lead to the conclusion that the powers 
deposited in the Church, and more especially in the 
Apostles as representatives of the Head of the Church, 
are in their essence independent of the State. With 
regard to the other point, which concerns the Apostle's 
mode of dealing with heretical opinions in fundamental 
matters, we wholly repudiate the inference drawn from 
a partial statement of his proceeding. It is said that 
St. Paul does not call for the expulsion of those among 
the Christian converts who had no belief in a corporeal 

* It is Hooker's opinion, in which the latest and some of the acutest crit- 
ics, as Ritschl, 'Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche,' p. 129, and 
Wieseler, concur, that iropvela, in Acts xv. 20, means illicit marriages. Ritschl 
proves that St. Paul enforced the decree— a point of considerable impor- 
tance in the controversy with the Tubingen school. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. jg^ 

resurrection. That may be : weakness of faith, errors 
in points of faith on the part of converts^ hearers^ and 
learners^ were dealt with tenderly, by the way of con- 
troversy. The very objects of the Christian Chnrcli 
would otherwise be defeated. But the question is, 
whether St. Paul held that the opinions ought to be 
tolerated ? Whether they could be professed or re- 
tained without forfeiture of the distinctive privileges 
of Christians ? What does he say of those who held 
them ? What but that, if those opinions were main- 
tained, their faith was vain, they were yet in their 
sins ; Christ had died in vain ? If such a declaration 
be not tantamount to excommunication, to cutting off 
those who obstinately persisted in such errors from 
Christian privileges, words have no meaning. Self- 
condemned, they became aliens, relapsed into the state 
of unconversion, by the very fact of their denying, not 
indeed a speculative opinion, but what (as even ideolo- 
gists admit, strangely inconsistent as such admission is 
with the system they * advocate) St. Paul always rep- 
resents as the corner stone of the Christian belief. Of 
course the Apostle proceeds in the first instance by the 
w^ay of controversy, or, to speak more correctly, of de- 
monstration. Of course his one great desire is to per- 
suade, to convince, to win to the truth, those wdio were 
weak or unsound in the faith; to clear up obscurities, 
and to remove difficulties from their way. Nor does 
he fail to show the inward harmony between the ordi- 
nary course of nature and the miraculous intervention 
of that Powder by which the laws that regulate the 
course of nature were ordained. That, however, is no 
more than he does in the case of offenders against the 
moral law. He exhausts all the resources of persua- 
sion, expostulation, and warning ; he appeals to the 
reason, the conscience, the heart, before he hints at 
any measure of a judicial character, even in the case 
of those who " defile the temple of the Holy Ghost." 

* There is no point on which Ideologists, even those who partially adopt 
the system, are more generally agreed than the necessity of explaining away 
the fact of the Resurrection. 



J 98 ^I^S TO tAITH. [Essay lY. 

But, as in this latter case, when all such preliminary 
endeavours proved to be ineffectual, he resorted ulti- 
mately to the exercise of the awful powers entrusted to 
the Apostles as governors of Christ's Church, as asses- 
sors with Him on the throne of judgment ; so also, 
beyond all doubt, he was prepared to act, even as he 
had acted in the case of Elymas at the very beginning 
of his ministry, in the case of all stubborn impugners 
of fundamental truths. 

In fact, the expressions which he uses in reference 
to those who attacked tenets which would undoubtedly 
be regarded by many as purely speculative and dog- 
matic, sound even harsh, and would be indefensible as 
they are painful, did they not proceed from a principle 
of infinite importance to the integrity of the Christian 
faith. "I would that they were cut oflT that trouble 
you ; " " Let him be accursed who preaches to you an- 
other Gospel;" these and similar"^ expressions had no 
reference to evil livers, as such, but to teachers and 
maintainers of evil doctrines, with which all corruptions 
of our moral nature are connected, but which have 
their origin in that higher element of our spiritual and 
intellectual being, for the regulation and conscientious 
use of which our responsibility is grave, even in pro- 
portion to its excellence and the incomj)arable majesty 
of the objects with which it is concerned. 

"We must further remark, that in order to bring the 
argument, such as it is, to bear upon the question of 
subscription as a condition of exercising the functions 
of the Christian ministry, it should- have been shown 
that St. Paul admitted any man to preach publicly, in 
the capacity of an appointed teacher, against the Res- 
urrection, or any other doctrine which had been plainly 
declared, or that he and his fellow Apostles failed to 
exercise the right of deposition, when admonition and 
warning were found ineffectual to secure the cause of 
truth. Such is not the conclusion which we draw from 
the case of Hymenseus and Alexander, whom the 

* Galatians v. 12 ; 1 Timothy iv. 1, 2; 2 Timothy iii. 8, 9 ; Titus i. 11, iii. 
10. Compare 2 John 10, 11 j 2 Peter iii. 17 ; Acts xx. 28-30. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. I99 

Apostle "delivered to Satan (the same sentence as tliat 
pronounced in the case of the Corinthian fornicator — • 
one which, whatever might be its eflPect, imdoubtedly 
amounts to excommunication), that they might learn 
not to blaspheme ;" nor from that of Hymen sens and 
Philetus, which is even more immediately to the point, 
*' who erred concerning the truth, saying that the res- 
urrection is already past" — unless, indeed, we presume 
that St. Paul allowed their word to "eat as doth a can- 
ker," and to " overthrow the faith " of his converts, 
without using the power " given to him by the Lord " 
for the protection of the weak brethren, "for whom 
Christ died." 

85. The practice of the early Church is too clearly 
established by a multitude of public acts to be open to 
a similar course of argument. The determination of 
the general body and the recognized representatives of 
the Christian community to exclude all teaching con- 
trary to its fundamental principles, to guard its doctrinal 
deposit by strict, definite, and unmistakable declara- 
tions, is the most prominent fact which meets every 
student of ecclesiastical history, which, indeed, is re- 
cognized most distinctly by those who feel a rooted 
antipathy to every shade of what they are pleased to 
call dogmatic intolerance. A different, and not un- 
plausible line of argument, is therefore adopted. The 
statement is hazarded that the State, rather than the 
Church, is responsible for this exclusiveness.'^ We 
are told f that, together with the inauguration of mul- 
titudinism, Constantino inaugurated a principle essen- 
tially at variance with it — that of doctrinal limitation ; 
and we are informed that historians, who are cer- 

* It is a singular instance of the influence which has heen exercised, di- 
rectly or indirectly, by the writings of one of the most subtle and ingenious 
of modern controversialists, that even this argument is derived, though used 
for very different purposes from Newman's theory about the Thirty-nine 
Articles. ' See Romanism and Popular Protestantism,' Lecture ix. p. 278. 
" Their imposition in its first origin was much more a political than an ec- 
clesiastical act; it was a provision of the State rather than of the Church, 
though the Church co-operated — the outward form into which our religion 
was cast has depended in no slight measure on the personal opinions and 
wishes of laymen and foreigners. 

t E. and K, p. 160, 



200 ^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

tainly all but imanimous upon the point, are wrong in 
supposing that the increasing strictness of definitions 
in the Christian creed most be attributed to the rise of 
successive heresies. Such assertions can, of course, only 
be refuted completely by a searching inquiry into the 
records of Christian antiquity ; but they may be met 
by some decisive facts ; and we have no hesitation in 
asserting that the part thus assigned to the first Chris- 
tian emperor is diametrically in opposition to histor- 
ical facts. So far from inaugurating the principle 
of doctrinal limitation, Constantine from first to last 
had one paramount object, and that was to get rid of 
doctrinal discussions, and to bring about a compromise 
between conflicting parties — in fact, to do exactly what 
we are told would have been so desirable, viz., to en- 
force forbearance between the great antagonistic parties, 
and to insist on the maxim that neither had a right to 
limit the common Christianity to the exclusion of the 
other. Constantine looked upon tbe controversy be- 
tween Catholics and Arians, as the representatives of 
the secular authority are generally disposed to do, al- 
together from without; and the special points under 
discussion were to him matters of utter indifference.* 
The course which he had pursued in the first instance 
was the very wisest that could be devised; nor, con- 
sidering the unparalleled importance of the crisis and 
the results of his decision, do we see how Christians can 
doubt that it was brought about by the great Head of 
the Church. He called together from all quarters of 
his empire the governors of the whole Christian com- 
munity, and referred the questions under discussion to 
their arbitration. The result was absolutely decisive. 
The ISTicene Creed was drawn up as a declaration of 
what was included in that common Christianity. It 
defined the true limits beyond which no teacher f could 
go without infringing the fundamental principles of the 
faith. With the exception of one word, that Creed con- 

* See his epistle to Alexander and Arius. Euseb. V. C, ii. 69, 70. 

t It must be remembered that subscription was exacted at once of the 
clergy, as being_ teachers, but not of the laity. Anathemas, however, were 
pronounced against all who openly denied the doctrines of the Creed. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND 8UBSCEIPTI0N. 201 

tained no single statement in wliich, both as regarded 
substance and form, all Clinrches had not previously 
coincided. That word represented not "the harden- 
ing of fluid and unsettled notions," but the existence 
of one fixed universal conviction, that the centre and 
life of Christianity is found in the recognition of the 
absolute and perfect Godhead of its Founder and Head. 
The word was chosen, not by Constantine, but by those 
divines who clearly perceived the vital character of the 
question at issue. They chose it because nothing short 
of an exact definition would deliver Christendom from 
the corruption with which it was menaced. The word 
was open to cavil, and, if left unexplained, to fair ob- 
jection ;* but with such explanation as was at once 
given and accepted, it expressed the mind of the uni- 
versal Church. It must not be supposed that the object 
was to express the personal opinions of the Bishops 
present ; even the arguments by which they might de- 
fend those opinions were matters, comparatively speak- 
ing, of indiff'erence. In selecting that word they were 
actuated but by one wish — that of expressing clearly 
and unmistakably the conviction of the entire body in 
whose name they spoke. The most unlearned, the least 
conversant with technical terms or philosophical dis- 
cussions among them, were rejoiced to have that word, 
feeling that they could not show their faces to their 
own congregations if they returned without having 
recorded such a decision as might exclude for ever the 
incongruous and hostile element from the sphere of 
Christian communion. Constantine did but give effect 
to the universal will. They inaugurated the doctrinal 
limitation ; he gave it for the time legal validity. JSTor 
must it be lost sight of, that all the special pleading, all 
the philosophical speculations and technical innovations 
began, as indeed has always been the case, not with the 

* See Athanasius, ' De Syn. Nic.,' § 20-24, and Basil, Ep. 52, with Gar- 
nier's note. It is well known that all the great divines of that age were quae 
satisfied with an honest acceptance of the doctrine expressed by 'Ofxoovaios, 
even in the case of those who for a time were unwilling to receive that word. 
Few writers of late have dealt with the question so fairly as the Benedictine 
editors, or as Tillemont, * Memoires H. E.,' torn. iv. p. 125. 
9* 



202 ^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

maintainers, but with the opponents of the old Catholic 
doctrine. "That there was a time when God the "Word 
was not; that He was alien in essential substance from 
the absolute God ;" these and similar forms of what the 
Church then rejected — and so long as she exists will 
ever reject as blasphemy — had their origin in the cat- 
echetical schools tainted most deeply by neoplatonism. 
The necessity of a new, a more searching and com- 
prehensive, and at the same time a more exclusive 
term, was entirely owing to those metaphysical specu- 
lations. The Church acknowledged the truth of the 
conclusion drawn by its most clearsighted champions, 
that the introduction of an intermediate Being, neither 
truly -God nor truly man, was a subtle but unquestion- 
able form of polytheism,* subversive of all the principles 
on which the redemption of humanity depends. The 
decision was, undoubtedly, exclusive. It excluded — 
it ejected as a poison, a gangrene, a treasonable lie — 
the doctrine which is too often regarded as a mere 
verbal error, or one depending upon the inherent im- 
perfection of a finite intellect ; but for that exclusiveness 
the Church, and the Church alone is responsible. So 
far indeed was the State from taking upon itself the 
responsibility of this " doctrinal limitation," that within 
a very short time its whole power was brought to bear 
upon the Church, in order to compel it to reverse its 
decision and to eliminate that one word from its creed. 
During the reigns of two most able and powerful sov- 
ereigns no means of fraud, intimidation, or violence 
were spared to produce the result which is now repre- 
sented to be so desirable — that of sweeping away the 
limitary definition which shut out the only influential 
dissentients from office and communion in the Church. 
It was assuredly a providential dispensation to test the 
sincerity of the Church's faith, and to demonstrate its 
independence of the State. An age of terrible struggles 
intervened before the final triumph ; but during that 
time the principle took such root that no storms have 

* This is the great, the palmary argument of Athanasius, adopted by- 
Basil, Gregory, and all the great divines who have written against Arianism. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCKIPTION. 203 

since shaken it. One point requires especial notice ; it 
is often overlooked : neither Constantine nor his succes- 
sors attempted to introduce the terms of the Arian 
heresy in the formularies which they recommended,* 
freely as they allowed the doctrines of Arianism to be 
preached; they merely wished to exclude from the 
Creed the one word of doctrinal limitation ; and in that 
attempt they failed. The early Church knew that it 
was a matter of life or death ; and in the position where 
that Church left us we stand, with a Creed definitely 
stating, not explaining or discussing, but simply de- 
claring, those doctrinal facts f without which our com- 
mon Christianity would be a mere name. 

86. That the actual position of our own Church is 
definite and unmistakable is recognized both by those 
who maintain, and not less distinctly by those who as- 
sail it, as is shown by the direction of their attacks. It 
is in principle precisely that of the Apostolic Church, in 
fact of all portions of the Church, in the best and purest 
ages. The first object of our Church is to determine 
the grounds on which all its doctrine is based. That 
she does by enumerating the canonical books of Holy 
Writ, to which alone she appeals for authoritative con- 
firmation of her teaching. Belief in the Scriptures, in 
their genuineness, authenticity, and divine orgin — be- 
lief in them not merely as fundamental, but as the 

foundation of all fundamentals ^X "^^ ^^^ ^^^ suflScient 
warrant for the Creeds § themselves, is the first condi- 
tion of communion, a condition not stated simply be- 
cause it is assumed as a point about Avhich no question 
could be raised by Christians. The Bible is to our 

* Hence not only Constantine, but even Constantius is spoken of in terms 
of respect by stanch but candid upholders of the orthodox doctrine, as Hilary, 
Ambrose, Theodoret, and Gregory Nazianzen. See the preface to G. N. Or. 
iv. p. 76, ed. Ben. 

1 1 use the expression advisedly — the doctrines of the Church are facts, 
and the facts are doctrines. 

X The term first used, if I mistake not, by Newman. See 'Romanism and 
Popular Protestantism,' p. 287. It coincides with Chillingworth's well-known 
saying, and with Hegel's "Dabei," i. e., with the Creeds, "gait in der pro- 
testantischen Kirche die Bestimmung, dass die Bibel die wesentliche Grund- 
lage der Lehre sey." — ' Philosophic der Religion,' p. 29. 

§ Article viii. 



204 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

Church* as it was to the early Church, as it was most 
distinctly and emphatically to the Churches of the Ref- 
ormation, the Word of God. The three Creeds are ac- 
cepted and set forth as the condensed declaration of the 
articles of faith which she holds, on the ground of their 
scripturality, to be true, and on that of their importance 
to be fundamental. In the Thirfy'-nine Articles of Ee- 
ligion she exhibits the whole body of her theology as 
contradistinguished from that of churches which had 
corrupted, mutilated, or added to, the truth. The gen- 
eral objects of those Articles are to repudiate the errors 
of the Papal system, and to maintain what is called the 
Catholic doctrine, — that is, the whole system of doc- 
trines recognized by the Church of Christ as opposed to 
early heresies.f So far her position is clear. With re- 
gard to the acts of adhesion required of her members, 
we find the same substantial identity of principle with 
the early Church. As to hearers of the word, to attend- 
ants upon her services, we readily admit that no formal 
act of adherence beyond what is given in baptism, and 
is afterwards implied by their acceptance of her minis- 
trations, ought to be required. J^or does our Church 
require it.J As we believe to have been the practice 
in the Apostolic age, she admits all applicants to free 
participation in any ordinances from which, judging for 
themselves, they expect to derive benefit ; nor does she 
retain even so much of the discipline of the post-Apos- 

* See Articles xvii. (the last words'), xx. xxii. xxxiv. There cannot be any- 
reasonable doubt that the " word of God" in these Articles means the Bible. 
In other passages it might possibly be explained away, but the expressions 
"Holy Scriptui'e" and "word of G-od" were most certainly synonymous in 
the mind of the compilers of the Articles, as they are now in the mind of the 
imposers of subscription. The results of denying that the word of God is 
co-extensive with Holy Scripture are drawn out clearly enough in E. and R., 
pp. 176, 177. 

t See Dr. Arnold's ' Life and Correspondence,' ii. p. 136. The passage is 
quoted further on. Compare Waterland, vol. ii. p. 302. 

X This does not touch the case of the Universities. Of course, any colle- 
giate or corporate institution has the right to impose its own conditions for 
admission to its privileges or benefices. There is great force in the argu- 
ments of the pamphlet, written, I believe, by Mr. Maurice, ' Subscription no 
Bondage,' 1835 — " In all schools and universities there is a contract expressed 
or implied between the teacher and the learner, as to the principles on which 
the one agrees to teach and the other to learn — and to state the terms of this 
contract is at once the most honest method, and the most serviceable to edu- 
cation." 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. 205 

tolic Chiircli as might be held desirable in order to pro- 
tect the most solemn rites from profanation. Even that 
risk is incurred in preference to the possible exclusion 
of timid and scrupulous believers. Our Church, to use 
a somewhat pedantic but not inexpressive term, is mul- 
titudinous, in the sense that it does not inquire minutely 
and jealously into the qualifications and opinions of its 
members, but opens wide its gates day and night, and 
offers freely to all the leaves that were given for the 
healing of the nations. But that is quite a different 
question from the terms of admission to the functions 
of the ministry."^ Our Church has learned from St. 
Paul, from his fellow Apostles, and from his Master, 
that an imperfect knowledge, much more denial of the 
truth when it extends to fundamental principles, when 
it touches the " Divine personalities," and the authority 
of God's word, is an insuperable disqualification for the 
ministerial office. 

37. It is disingenuous to represent this difference be- 
tween a lay and clerical member of the Church as im- 
plying that one is free to inquire, the other bound to 
profess what, be it true or be it false, may not be true 
to him. The layman is simply treated, so far and so 
long as he chooses to be so treated, as one whose opin- 
ions are in process of formation ; whereas the other, by 
the mere fact of his assuming the functions of a teacher, 
declares that upon all essential points his mind is al- 
ready made up. A school of theology may, within cer- 
tain limits, be a fair arena for speculative conflicts ; but 
the chair of the professor, and d fortiori the pulpit of 
the minister, should be occupied by one who is in pos- 
session of the truth. It has been stated, that whenever 
laymen are p.ut in positions where their influence may 

* Thus Waterland — " Subscription is not a term of lay communion, but of 
ministerial conformity, on acceptance of trusts and privileges," vdl, ii. p. 362. 
Again, " This writer cannot distinguish between ejecting and not admitting, 
nor between Church-communion and Church-trusts. I said not a word about 
ejecting any man out of communion," ib. p. 392. Bishop Bull takes precisely 
the same view, ' Vindication of the Church of England,' vol, ii. p. 211, ed. 
Burton. So also does Bishop Jeremy Taylor, ' Ductor dubitantium,' iii. c. 4. 
In accordance with this principle, Athanasius admitted the Semi-Arians to 
communion, although they would not accept the term Homousion; but he 
would not allow them to hold office in the Church. 



206 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay IV, 

affect the religions principles of members of the Church, 
the same guarantees are exacted as in the case of min- 
isters. Though incorrect in point of fact, that state- 
ment bears witness to the reasonableness of the condi- 
tion, that professed teachers of the Church's doctrines 
ought, in some form or other, to give an assurance that 
they know what these doctrines are, and that they re- 
ceive them and intend to teach them without any essen- 
tial modification. There are several conceivable ways 
in which the Church may satisfy herself upon this point; 
but surely the easiest and most natural — the least open 
to the charge of unfairness — is to state clearly, broadly, 
and completely, the principles, and doctrines, which she 
holds to be fundamental, and to require of those who 
are candidates for the most important of all offices, a 
declaration deliberately made and attested by the sim- 
ple act of subscription, that they are one in mind and 
in convictions with herself. The Church can do no less 
than demand such a pledge, that at the time when a 
man accepts the office, he allows,^ that is, he honestly 
and unreservedly approves and assents to her code of 
faith. 

38. This, it is said, is equivalent to a promise that 
a man will believe, and that is a promise which it is 
not in his power to fulfil. But so far as regards belief, 
subscription is not a promise, but a declaration. f What- 
ever promise is implied concerns not our convictions, 
but our acts. "VYe pledge ourselves simply to this, 
that, so long as we hold an office of trust, we will not 

* It is strange that any scholar should raise a question as to the meaning 
of this word. It occurs frequently in our early formularies, and always in the 
sense of approving and accepting. See also Luke xi. 48 ; 1 Thess. ii, 4. As 
to its meaning in Subscription, Jeremy Taylor writes thus (1. c.) :— "Lubens 
et ex animo subscripsi, that's our form in the Church of England. Consen- 
tiens subscripsi : so it was in the ancient Church, as St. Austin reports. I 
consent to the thing, my mind goes with it." 

t Thus Jeremy Taylor, 1. c, c. xxiii. "Ecclesiastical subscription only 
gives witness of our present consent, but according to its design and purpose 
for the future it binds us only to the conservation of peace and unity." His 
view of the act of subscription is of great importance. " It implies that he 
who subscribes does actually approve the articles overwritten — does, at the 
time, believe them to be such as it is said they are ; true, if they only say 
they are true ; useful, if they pretend to usefulness ; necessary, if it is affirmed 
they are necessary. For if the subscriber believe not this, he by hypocrisy 
serves the ends of public peace, and his own preferment." 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCKIPTION. 207 

contravene the purposes for which it was instituted. 
The objects of our faith are, indeed, immutable truths ; 
but, knowing the changeableness of the subjective 
faculties which apprehend them, and the manifold dis- 
turbances to which spiritual development is liable, we 
make no promise that we will retain those convictions ; 
although, from the very nature of convictions touching 
the highest interests of our being, we entertain a hope, 
a trust, a something in all honest men approaching to, 
and in single-hearted believers identified with, a con- 
fident assurance that we shall retain them to the end. 
The promise, however, as to acts is binding, on the 
plainest grounds of moral obligation, and that without 
any reference to the ]30ssible contingency of legal pen- 
alties and disqualifications in case of its violation. 

39. This point is of primary importance. It concerns 
our conscience mqre nearly than any considerations 
bearing upon our ministerial position. It has been 
lately asserted, as I believe for the first time, that the 
moral obligation of the act of subscription is commen- 
surate and identical with the legal obligation. Now 
the effect of this doctrine, were it generally adopted, 
would be the practical annihilation of all obligation, 
in the great majority of cases where any question could 
arise. It is but too obvious that a man ma}^, if not 
directly, yet by insinuation and unmistakable inference, 
attack even the fundamental doctrines of the Church 
without incurring the danger of legal conviction. In 
fact, so far as the mere legal obligation is concerned, 
there could be no object whatever in requiring sub- 
scription. That act does not render a man liable to 
legal consequences in a higher or different degree than 
'would the acceptance of an office to which certain con- 
ditions are attached by the legislature. It is perfectly 
competent to* the supreme authority to inflict depriva- 
tion for any infringement of those conditions, without 
reference to the previous concurrence of ministers in 
the definition of their duties. The act of subscription 
would be superfluous, if it did not superadd to the legal 
a perfectly distinct and incomparably higher obligation, 



208 ^^S TO FAITH. [EssATlV. 

— even one wliicli binds the conscience of an honest 
man."^ 

40. The existence of the moral obligation does not, 
however, determine its exact nature and extent. The 
question still remains, how far the act of subscription 
implies conformity between a man's inmost convictions 
and the doctrinal formularies of the Church.f That 
the conformity does not necessarily extend to an abso- 
lute and entire acceptation of any human formularies, 
as exhaustive or perfect representations of Divine truth, 
may readily be conceded. Such a demand would, in 
fact, be tantamount to an assumption of verbal and 
plenary inspiration, which the compilers of the docu- 
ments and the imposers of subscription w^ould be the 
first to disclaim. The conformity must, however, amount 
to as much as this. Taking the articles of religion in 
their natural and obvious meaning^ as upon the whole 
with singular unanimity, and in the most essential points 
with absolute unanimity, they have been understood 
-and interpreted by our great divines, the subscriber 
recognizes in them a faithful exhibition of Christian 
doctrine, the rule of his public teaching, the authorita- 
tive expression of the faith once delivered to the saints. 
On two points especially, an explicit and unhesitating 
act of adhesion is demanded — the canon of Holy Scrip- 
ture, and the Creeds which present its fundamental 
doctrines in a concentrated form.§ Short of this con- 

* See the touching and unanswerable statement of Mr. Whiston, quoted by 
Waterland, vol. ii. p. 400. 

tThis is the declaration of the four Oxford Tutors in 1841 : — "We readily 
admit the necessity of allowing that liberty in interpreting the formularies 
of our Church which has been advocated by many of our most learned bishops 
and eminent divines ; but this tract puts forth new and startling views as to 
the extent to which that liberty may be carried. For if we are right in our 
apprehension of the author's meaning, we are at a loss to see what security 
would remain, were his principles generally recognized, that the most plainly 
erroneous doctrines and practices of the ChurchTof Rome might not be in- 
culcated in the lecture-rooms of the university and from "the pulpits of our 
churches." 

X See Dr. Waterland on ' Arian Subscription,' vol. ii. p. 335. Bishops Bull, 
vol. ii. p. 211, and J. Taylor, quoted above. 

§ To these should be added the doctrine of the Sacraments. The statute 
of Elizabeth 13, which requires subscription to all the Articles, specifies in 
the first place such only as concern the confession of the Christian faith and 
the doctrine of the Holy Sacraments. See Collier, ' Ecclesiastical History,' 
Tol. vi. pp. 485 and 489. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 209 

forraitj, it is certain that a minister cannot sympathize 
with the spirit, or give effect to the purposes, of the 
Church. Common sense, in this case fully in accord 
with the highest reason, is a sufficient guide to the most 
cautious and scrupulous inquirer. Nor can I forbear 
from quoting the words of one whom no man will sus- 
pect of any tendency to dogmatic intolerance, any dis- 
regard of even exaggerated sensitiveness. In a letter 
to one who had felt much perplexity about subscription, 
after alluding to difficulties formerly experienced by 
himself. Dr. Arnold* writes thus : — " The real honesty 
of subscription appears to me to consist in a sympathy 
with the system to which you subscribe, in a preference 
of it, not negatively merely as better than others, but 
positively, as in itself good and true in its most charac- 
teristic points. !N"ow, the most characteristic points of 
the English Church are two ; that it maintains what is 
called the Catholic Faith as opposed to the early heresies, 
and is also decidedly a Reformed Church as opposed 
to the priestly and Papal system." Such must have 
been the feelings of the Oxford tutorf who some twenty 
years since bore this testimony to our Church, willi 
especial reference to its safeguard of subscription — '^ I 
know not where free scope may be found for the feel- 
ings of awe, mystery, tenderness, and devotedness, 
when they struggle for utterance in the breast of the 
spiritual man, more freely than in our own communion : 
where our sons are taught, without adding thereto^ or 
diminishing aught from it^ the great mystery of godli- 
ness : God manifest in the fleshy justified in the Spirit, 
seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on 
in the world, received up into glory." No one holding 
those principles could feel any difficulty in subscription. 
Such a man is satisfied, not because he is safe from 
legal consequences, but because he feels himself in 
harmony with the spirit of his Church, because he 
knows that he is offering an honest act of fealty, and is 
willing, without subterfuge or equivocation, to carry 

* 'Life and Correspondence,' vol. ii. p. 177. 

t * Letter to Rev. T. T. Churton by Rev. H. B. Wilson,' 1841. 



21-0 -AJDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

out her intentions to the best of his ability. Should 
it, indeed, unhappily be the case, that in after years his 
mind should be so aifected as to reject not merely a 
word here and there, the meaning or application of ex- 
pressions about which the most learned and candid 
writers have differed, or even positive determinations 
upon questions of subordinate importance, but the great 
truths, the objective facts, the fundamental doctrines 
set forth plainly and unmistakably in those formularies, 
then surely the moral obligation is positive. It leaves 
but one alternative. He cannot do the work which he 
has undertaken, cannot preach the doctrines, cannot 
proclaim the facts which are the very foundation of the 
Church ; how can he retain the trust ? If people did 
not understand this to be our feeling as ministers, they 
would speedily seek for some other guarantee. If it 
were generally believed that, when called upon to clear 
himself from '^ odious imputations," a minister might 
put a stop to all further inquiry by simply renewing 
his subscription, with a clear understanding that there- 
by he means no more than that he recognizes a legal 
obligation, retaining the right of explaining away, or 
even denying privately and publicly, the very state- 
ments to which he puts his hand, the whole body of the 
laity would scout the very notion of subscription, would 
reject it as illusory, as a mere sham.* The only light 
in which they look upon subscription is, that it is a 
means of ascertaining what truths a man holds, and 
what he holds himself bound to teach, — not surely upon 
what terms he may consider himself justified in retain- 
ing ofiice or emoluments in the Church. They will be 

* These words express with eqnal force and accuracy the general feelings 
of the laitr. " If the Church of England really possesses that element of 
vitality which her sons proudly believe to be inherent in her, she will never 
flinch from vindicating the integrity of her Articles and the uniformity of her 
belief; but if she should be ill-advised enough to allow her tests to be broken 
down and rendered void by strained and licentious expositions, if she place 
her only hope of safety and unity in allowing her sons to profess one creed 
and believe another, let her prep*^are for that well-merited downfall to which 
deceit and double dealing never fail to conduct." A tract bearing the title, 
'The Articles Construed by Themselves,' Oxford, IS-il, attributed, as I be- 
lieve, to R. Lowe, Esq., formerly of Magdalen College, now Vice-President of 
the Committee of Council on Education. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION 211 

prepared to allow time for consideration to any man 
harassed by perplexing doubts : no man would be re- 
garded with more entire sympathy and tenderness than 
one whose spirit might be overwrought in its struggles 
with storms which haunt the higher regions of intel- 
lectual life : but so long as he works, prays, preaches, 
administers the sacraments of the Church, or discharges 
the kindred and no less responsible duty of forming 
the character of youth under the sanction of the minis- 
terial office, laymen presume, and would be scandalized 
to hear it doubted, that he holds substantially the con- 
victions which he professed, when formally, publicly, 
deliberately, at a most critical moment of his life, he 
signed his name in token of unfeigned assent to the 
Articles of his Church. 

41. One reason assigned for the removal of all 
doctrinal tests may require special consideration.* 
It is stated that there is a wide-spread and increasing 
alienation from the Church ; that the minds of thought- 
ful men reject the views of Christian doctrine common- 
ly advanced in our churches and chapels — that is, in 
other words, by the teachers of nearly all religious 
denominations : and it is distinctly implied, that this 
alienation is to be attributed to the growing sense of 
incompatibility between the tenets generally regarded 
as essential to Christianity,- and the conclusions of 
reason from the progress of science, and more espe- 
cially " from the advance of general knowledge con- 
cerning the inhabitancy of the world. We might 
question the fact of an increasing alienation. We 
might argue that, compared with the state of the 
church in the last century, her existing condition is one 
of wider and far more effectual influence ; that every 
test upon which reliance can be placed indicates a 
strengthening of religious convictions ; that the num- 
ber of communicants is multiplied at least tenfold; 
that the very face of the country is changed by the 

* Mr. Wilson can hardly hope to disprove his own forcible statement. 
*' Schemes of comprehension of necessity defeat their own design : if weak 
brethren are included on the one hand, weak brethren are excluded on the 
Other."— Letter to Rev. T. T. Churton. 



212 ^^S TO FAITH [EesATlT. 

multitude of clinrclies built, enlarged, or restored ; 
and that, for the first time since the Eeformation, our 
Church has grappled with the real difficulties of her 
position, sends forth missionaries to all quarters of the 
earth, and has organized the colonial episcopate. TTe 
might point to many of the greatest names in art, 
science, literature, and politics, which within the same 
period have recognized in our Church a true manifesta- 
tion of the Divine life. Xor, again, canit be denied that 
the alleged facts of the censu's of 1S51, in themselves 
most questionable, have been most unfairly applied. 
Certainly, of all inferences, the least reasonable is, that 
the absence of some 45 per cent, of the population 
from public service was in any way attributable to 
conscientious objections to the doctrine taught in our 
churches, or to a conviction that heathenism, after all, 
is no very lamentable condition of two-thirds of the 
human race. We should have thought that ignorance, 
vice, and indifference, on the one hand, on the other, 
the want of sufficient and proper accommodation, were 
generally recognized as the main causes of what cer- 
tainly was a most painful result of an inquiry into the 
actual number of worshippers. Upon these points we 
need not dilate ; but this we maintain without hesita- 
tion, — the alienation, to whatever extent it may really 
exist, is not owing to the doctrines set forth in the 
Creeds of our Church, and embodied in her liturgical 
formularies. The surest way of emptying any church 
or chapel is to substitute for earnest preaching of those 
very doctrines which are specially selected for attack 
or suspicion, a vague, cold, rationalistic system of so- 
called Christian ethics." Let the people suspect that 
their ethical development is the single object of all 
the instrumentality of the Church, they would simply 
throw it off as cumbrous and superfluous ; and they 
would be right. The experiment has been tried here 
and abroad. It has had one unvarying result. In 

* Not but that our strictest dogmatical ■nriters are most careful to assign 
its right place to morality. Waterland says, vrith reference to this_ very 
question of subscription, " Every heresy in morality is of more pernicious 
consequence than heresies in point of positive rehgion." 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND 6UBSCEIPTI0N. 213 

Germany, where for a time it had free play, jt alien- 
ated the great body of the nation from the communion 
of the Church. In England sufficient proof has been 
given that a '^prudential system of ethics "not only 
fails "as a restraining force upon society," but that, 
disjoined from the vital doctrines of Christianity, it 
leads rapidly to the decay, and ends in the dissolution, 
of any denomination by which it is adopted. This is 
the case even in independent communities where the 
principal parts of the service are adjusted by the min- 
ister and his congregation — where prayer and psalm- 
ody may be kept in harmony with preaching, however 
rationalistic. But in a church where the doctrines 
taught in the Creeds find an expression in every prayer, 
the contradiction between the sermon of a rationalist 
and the words which he is constrained to utter in his 
ministerial functions, will ahvays be, and ought always 
to be, fatal to his influence. If the congregation have 
good reason to suspect that, in reciting the Creeds, the 
minister looks upon himself as subjected to the hard 
bondage of uttering what he inwardly disavows, or re- 
gards as an " unhappy " form ; that in the petitions of 
the Litany he uses expressions touching the " Divine 
personalities" which are to him little more than meta- 
physical abstractions, or speculative conclusions of the 
schools ; if they believe that, from the opening prayer 
to the final blessing, there has been a constant struggle, 
a series of inward protests, Jesuitical reservations or 
interpretations, going on within the mind of the 
reader; whatever else may be the effect upon their 
hearts, one effect is sure, their moral, sense will be 
shocked, they will recoil in indignation from such 
hypocrisy. Even supposing he should have commu- 
nicated to them his own unhappy doubts and repug- 
nances, they will feel that it is a bad and evil thing for 
them to share in acts of such glaring and flagrant in- 
consistency. They will soon desert the church alto- 
gether, or testify their contempt for the ordinances or 
the minister, by their demeanour when he preaches, or 
by their expressive silence in the acts of common wor- 



214 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

ship. One thing must be looked in the face. The 
abolition of subscription to those doctrines which find 
expression in our Liturgy^ would be ntterlj futile 
nnless that Liturgy itself were entirely reconstructed. 
]N^o partial reform, not the widest reform which has 
ever been suggested, or would be tolerated by the most 
indifferent and sceptical congregation in this land, 
would free from intellectual bondage the conscience of 
those who are now calling for the relaxation of sub- 
scription. It is not a mere phrase here and there 
which would change their position; it is the very 
spirit of Christianity, full of the recognition of its 
most special and characteristic truths, which drives the 
minister to the alternative of speaking as a believer in 
each and all essential doctrines, or of standing self-con- 
victed and self-condemned in the presence of Him 
whom he mocks by the utterance of prayers which he 
inwardly disavows. 

What we desire is this, — to bring into the fold of 
Christ's Church all who are estranged from its com- 
munion; but it must be a complete and an honest 
work. Our commission is to give and teach the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The 
Christian faith is a perfect and indissoluble whole. We 
cannot consent to mutilate or disfigure it. We cannot 
entrust it to the care of any ministers who are not pre- 
pared to give full and satisfactory pledges that they 
accept it as a whole. We have no fear of any conse- 
quences, so long as men can rely upon the trustworthiness 
of the agents through whom the Church acts. The 
one thing of which all need to be assured is, that their 
ministers hold fast the form of sound words ; the truth 
once delivered to the saints ; the canon of Holy 
Scriptures, which are able to make wise unto salvation ; 
the knowledge of the Father and the Son, which is 
eternal life ; in a word, faith in the Incarnation and 
the Atonement, without any subtlety of interpretation, 
in the plain sense accepted by all the Churches of 
Christendom. Upon subordinate, or purely specula- 

* This was distinctly felt br the leaders in the Arian controversy in the 
last century. See Dr. Waterland's tract on ' Arian Subscription/ vol. ii. 



Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. 215 

tive questions, considerable latitude of interpretation 
is conceded — the wider and freer the better for the 
cause of truth. But this liberty is conceded because 
men doubt not that they who use it accept those 
fundamental truths. Abuse of the concession — attempts 
to strain the liberty so as to unsettle the doctrines 
nearest to the hearts of Christians, would speedily 
bring about results the very opposite to those contem- 
plated by many who struggle against existing limita- 
tions. It must be borne in mind, that if changes were 
made, they would probably be made in a different 
direction from that pointed out by latitudinarians. 
To increase, not to diminish our securities, — to exclude, 
not to admit incongruous and adverse elements — such 
would be the great object of all earnest Christian men ; 
of those who would undoubtedly take the lead should 
the national ark be unloosed from its moorings, should 
the storms of angry and unscrupulous controversy 
once more thoroughly rouse the national spirit. We 
are far from wishing for any increase of stringency. 
So far as regards the terms of admission to the minis- 
try, we are satisfied with existing safeguards, provided 
always that men do not palter with us in a double 
meaning, that we are safe from special pleading and 
equivocation, that declarations are made in the sense 
in which those who hear them are well known to 
receive ft em, — that, in a word, we have precisely the 
same kind of confidence which is felt by all honourable 
men who are parties to compacts involving the recog- 
nition of weighty duties distinctly set forth and under- 
stood. 

"We need not fear the issue of the controversy. It 
may justify watchfulness, but not alarm. It is true 
that some questions have been raised, which are not 
likely to be finally settled in this generation. The 
elements which have thrown the mind of Europe into 
a state of disturbance, have undoubtedly penetrated 
very deeply into England. Our young men will have 
to pass through a fiery trial. It is not an age for rest, 
for unreasoning acquiescence in past traditions. The 



216 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 

progress of religious knowledge will in future be more 
beset by -speculative and intellectual difficulties than 
has been tbe case in former years. Candidates for the 
ministry must not be contented with meagre intro- 
ductions to Holy Scripture, or a superJficial analysis of 
its contents. It will be their duty — a duty more 
strongly felt than ever — to ascertain the grounds on 
which the Canon of Scripture has been received by 
the Church, and the proofs of the genuineness and 
authenticity of its contents ; they will test more 
closely and severely the evidences of all the doctrinal 
statements, to which after careful examination they 
will have to declare their assent. But in all this w^ork 
they have abundant help. The close, microscopic 
examination of the Book of Life is daily bringing its 
secret beauties into clearer light. The progress of 
historical research opens new fields of discovery in 
which the Scriptural exegetist finds valuable materials. 
The deep spiritual meaning of many an obscure pas- 
sage or neglected fact is discerned more distinctly by 
those who, candidly but warily, scrutinize the ob- 
jections of antagonists to the faith. The current of 
religious thought flows in broader and deeper channels 
than heretofore, and the vessels of those who sail under 
the sure guidance of the Spirit of God w^ill reach the 
haven freighted wdth treasures of great price. An- 
tagonisms may indeed become stronger, fccessions 
perhaps be more frequent ; superstition and infidelity 
may claim each its share in the spoil of troubled and 
faithless spirits ; but the revelation of Christ will not 
lose its hold upon the heart of the humble, nor upon 
the intellect of the truthful inquirer. Our branch of 
the Church will not be disinherited of its privileges or 
stripped of its safeguards ; it will eject rationalism in 
every form, more especially in the most un-English 
and Jesuitical of all forms, that of Ideology. It will 
continue to do its own proper work, preparing its 
members not for a dreamy state of repose in the 
bosom of the universal Parent, but for a full, perfect, 
and conscious life in the presence of the living God. 



ESSAY Y. 

THE MOSAIC RECOKD OF CREATIOiT, 



10 



COISTTENTS OF ESSAY V, 



1. Inteodttction : The Ceeatoe, Elo- , 

HIM— Jed O YAH. 

2. The Elohistic and Jehovistic theory, 

as stated by Bleek — Theories of As- 
true, Eichhorn, Ilgen, De Wette, 
Yon Bohlen, Gramberg, Ewald, 
Hupfeldt, and Knobel. 

3. "Want of unity— The most celebrated 

critics convict each other of false 
criticism— Their conclusions value- 
less. 

4. "Elohim" and "Jehovah" not sy- 

nonymous. 

5. The Creation— Unity of the first 

two chapters of Genesis : they do 
not contain two distinct accounts of 
the creation. 

6. Assertion that the Mosaic cosmogony 

is contradicted by the discoveries and 
progress of science, and that, there- 
fore^ Moses could not have been in- 
spired. 

7. First supposed difficulty, the age of 

the world. 



8. The words of Moses, though compre- 

hensive as to time, are precise as to 
the fact of creation. 

9. Meaning of the phrase " The heavens 

and the earth." 

10. Gen. i. 2. The state of the earth be- 

fore the six days' work. 

11. Yerse 3 compared with verses 14-19 

—Light and the earth before the 
sun — Theory of La Place. 

12. Meaning of the word "day." 

13. The six days not the six Geological 

periods. 

14. Supposed immobility of the earth. 

15. The Mosaic firmament an expanse, not 

a solid vault. 

16. Creation of one human pair — State- 

ment in ' Essays and Keviews' that 
the original formation of only one 
pair of human beings is taught only 
In the 2nd chapter, and not in the 
1st. 
IT. Conclusion. 



THE MOSAIC RECORD OE CREATION. 



1. Almost all ancient nations have traditions re- 
specting the origin of the tiniverse. These traditions 
differ in detail and representation according to the 
genius of the peo|)le bj whom they have been pre- 
served, but they retain a family likeness, and certain 
points of contact with each other and the Mosaic cos- 
mogony, with which some exhibit a striking resem- 
blance. Thus the Etruscans relate that God created 
the world in six thousand years. In the first thousand 
He created the heaven and the earth ; in the second 
the firmament; in the third the sea and the other 
waters of the earth ; in the fourth sun, moon, and stars ; 
in the fifth the animals belonging to air, water, and 
land ; in the sixth man alone."^ The Persian tradition 
also recognizes the six periods of creation, assigning to 
the first the heavens ; to the second the waters ; to the 
third the earth ; to the fourth trees and plants ; to the 
fifth animals ; to the sixth man.f Others mention the 
darkness, the chaotic mass of waters, the Spirit of God ; 
so that even in the judgment of modern critics, there 
must have been " a primitive, cosmogonical myth, uni- 
versally pervading antiquity." :[: How and when that 
universal myth arose, modern criticism does not say ; 
and yet it is a striking fact that there should be such a 
tradition, and that amidst the variety of modifications the 
original identity should still be perceptible. Christian 
apologists have found in the resemblances a presump- 
tion of its being derived from the original revelation, 
and in the consent of the various human families, com- 

* Suidas in voc. Tvpprjvla. 

t Zend Avesta, Kleuker. p. 19; Anquetil du Perron, torn. ii. 348; Bur- 
nouf, Yagiia, torn. i. p. 297. 
I Knobel on Genesis, p. 6. 



220 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay V. 

bined with the manifest supeiiority and historic char- 
acter of the account in Genesis, a proof of the Divine 
origin of the Mosaic Record, and of the unity of the 
human race.* Modern theology, on the contrary, 
teaches that the Mosaic cosmogony is only the Hebrew 
form of the original myth, bearing the palm indeed on 
account " of its simplicity, dignity, and sublimity," but 
still unhistoric in its relation, and inconsistent with the 
results of modern criticism and science. 

To discuss all the details of criticism would require 
volumes. But one alleged result, often stated in an off- 
hand, popular way, asserted witli unhesitating confi- 
dence, and repeated as absolutely certain, requires 
notice. It is said that in the Book of Genesis there 
are some portions in which God is spoken of exclusive- 
ly as Elohim — in others exclusively as Jehovah [the 
LoED in the Authorized Version]. This exclusive use 
of the one Divine name in some portions, and of the 
other in other portions, it is said, characterizes two dif- 
ferent authors, living at different times, and conse- 
quently Genesis is composed of two different docu- 
ments, the one Elohistic, the other Jehovistic, which 
moreover differ in statement, and consequently that 
this book was not written by Moses, and is neither in- 
spired nor trustworthy. ]^ow, not to notice the defec- 
tiveness of this statement as to the names of God, 
who in Genesis is also called El, El Elyon, Most High 
God ; El Shaddai, God Almighty ; Adonai, Lord ; nor 
the fact that in other books, as Jonah and the Psalms, the 
same exclusiveness is found ; let us look at this state- 
ment as a supposed result of criticism. It is generally 
urged as if on this point critics were all of one mind, 
agreed in the portions which are Elohistic or Jehovistic 
— unanimous as to the characteristic differences of style 
in the separate portions, in fact as if the theory came 
with the authority of universal consent. Were this 
the case, it would necessarily carry with it great 
weight. For, though the conclusions of criticism dif- 

* Grotius ' de Yeritate,' who has given an ample collection of ancient tes- 
timonies, lib. i. § xvi. Faber, ' Horse Mosaicse, vol. i. pp. 17-40. 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC KECOED OF CEEATION. 221 

fer from the demonstrations of pure science and the in- 
ferences of induction, yet, when unanimously adopted 
by those competent to judge, they deservedly influence 
the minds of all reasonable persons. But this is not 
the case in the present theory. The popular statement 
given above does not represent the true state of the 
case. The fact is, that there is here the greatest vari- 
ety of opinion, and the modifications of the above ap- 
parently simple theory are so widely divergent, as 
either to shake the value of the criticism, or throw a 
dark shade of doubt on the competence of the critics. 
In the first place, there is a difference as to the extent 
to which the theory is to be applied. Some confine it 
to the Book of Genesis ; others include Exodus to 
chapter vi. ; others, as Knobel, Bleek, and Ewald, as- 
sert that the Jehovistic and Elohistic differences can be 
recognized through the whole Pentateuch to the end of 
Joshua. Some, as J. D. Michaelis, Jahn, Yater, Hart- 
mann, regard Genesis as a loose and unsystematic 
stringing together of disjointed fragments. 2. But 
passing these by, let us look at the state of the Elohistic 
and Jehovistic theory, as stated by Bleek in his Intro- 
duction. 

i. In the year 1753, Astruc, a French physician, 
taught that the Book of Genesis is made up of twelve 
memoirs or documents, of which the two principal are 
the Elohistic and the Jehovistic. From these Moses 
composed the book, which he wrote in twelve columns. 
Copyists mixed these together, and hence the present 
form of Genesis. 

ii. Eichhorn asserted that the present Book of Gen- 
esis is based upon two pre-Mosaic documents, distin- 
guished by Elohim and Jehovah, and that the author, 
in relating any event, selected that document in which 
the fullest account was contained. Sometimes the 
accounts are mixed together. Some other documents 
were consulted. 

iii. Ilgen supposes seventeen documents, but only 
three authors, one Jehovist, two Elohists, and is so 
acute in his scent as sometimes to divide even single 
verses between the three, and give to each his own. 



222 ^'^^ TO FAITH. [EssatV, 

iv. De Wette's theory, in the first edition of his In- 
troduction, is, that a continuous Elohistic document 
pervades and forms the basis of the whole book, and 
extends to Exod. vi. In this the author inserted what 
he found in one, or, probably, in several Jehovistic 
documents. 

Y. Yon Bohlen believes in the same Elohistic basis, 
but denies the existence of Jehovistic documents. The 
author of the book in its present state is the Jehovist, 
so that only two persons are concerned. 

vi. Gramberg makes three authors — the Elohist, the 
Jehovist, and the compiler, who does not scruj)le some- 
times to substitute one Divine name for the other. 

vii. Ewald exhibits a variety of opinions : first, he 
began by holding the unity of Genesis, and proving it 
against both the document and the fragment hypothesis. 
His arguments have not yet been refuted, either by 
himself or others. Secondly, about ten years after- 
wards he taught that the basis of the Book of Genesis 
is an ancient writing, of which considerable remains 
are found in the whole Pentateuch, and which is dis- 
tinguished by peculiarity of language, especially by the 
use of Elohim up to Exod. vi. 2. This author had in- 
corporated into his book more ancient documents, as 
the Decalogue and Exod. xxi.-xxiii. At a subsequent 
period arose a;jiother work on the ancient history, which 
ascribed the use of Jehovah to patriarchal times. From 
this later work portions were inserted into the former 
by the author of the present Book of Genesis, so that 
here there are at the least four writers concerned. 
Thirdly, Ewald extended and modified this theory by 
supposing more than two treatments of the ancient his- 
tory forming the contents of the Pentateuch, and the 
Book of Joshua. He ascribes Genesis in its present 
form to that writer, whom in his first edition he calls 
the fourth narrator, and in his second edition the fifth 
narrator of the primitive histories, who lived in the 
time of Jotham. This work had several predecessors ; 
according to the first edition, three ; according to the 
second, six. Three of these are Elohistic. 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 223 

viii. • Hiipfeldt takes as the basis of our Genesis 
three independent historic works ; two Elohistic, one 
Jehovistic, and makes in addition a compiler. 

ix. Knobel believes in two documents : first, the 
Elohistic, forming the basis of the Pentateuch and of 
Joshua ; second, the Jehovistic, which again has two 
previous sources. There are, besides, free Jehovistic 
developments, in which the compiler sometimes fol- 
lowed hints in the two documents, sometimes popular 
tradition, and sometimes his own conceptions. 

3. This enumeration is far from exhausting the va- 
rieties, but is suflScient to show the want of unity. The 
reader will perceive that some assert one Elohistic doc-- 
ument — others, two — others, three. In like manner 
some make one Jehovist ; some more. Some make the 
Jehovist identical with the compiler ; others make him 
a different person. Some make two, others three, others 
four, Ewald seven documents by different authors the 
materials of Genesis. J^ow every one can understand 
that there is a great difference whether the Elohistic 
and Jehovistic portions be assigned to one or be divided 
amongst two, three, or more persons. He who says 
that there is only one Elohist must believe that in the 
whole Elohistic portion there is unity of style, tone, spirit, 
language. If there be two Elohists, then the former 
is mistaken as to the unity, and there ^ must be two 
diversities of style ; but if there be three Elohists, 
then both first and second critics are mistaken, and 
there must be three different styles. The portions 
assigned to each must also be smaller. Let the three 
Elohists be A, B, C. The first critic says that the 
whole belongs to A. The second critic says, 'No ; part 
belongs to B. The third critic says part belongs to A, 
part to B, and part to C. And thus the most cele- 
brated critics convict each other of false criticism. 
Hupfeldt condemns Ejiobel; Ewald condemns Hiip- 
feldt and Knobel ; Knobel condemns Ewald and Hiip- 
feldt. If Knobel's criticism is correct, Hupfeldt's is 
worthless. If Ewald be right, the others must be de- 
ficient in critical acumen. They may all be wrong, but 
only one of the three can be right. 



224 -A-IDS TO FAITH. [Ebsat V. 

But take into account all the other differences enu- 
merated above, one supposing that the documents are 
pre-Mosaic, another that they were written in the times 
of Joshua or the Judges, another in the time of David, 
another some centuries later ; and how uncertain must 
the principles of their criticism appear, — how valueless 
their conchisions ! With such facts can any sane per- 
son talk of the results of modern criticism as regards 
the Book of Genesis ? or be willing to give up the be- 
lief of centuries for such criticism as this ? 

It is self-evident that criticism leading to such in- 
consistent conclusions must be in a high degree imagi- 
native : a little examination shows that it is also unrea- 
sonably arbitrary. In order to make out the theory 
that there are two authors, one of whom is known by 
the exclusive use of Elohim, and the other by the 
exclusive use of Jehovah, and that the former is more 
ancient than the latter, it is necessary to point out 
paragraphs in which those Divine names are exclusive- 
ly used, and also to prove that the Elohist does not 
refer to the Jehovistic document ; for if the Elohist 
plainly refers to what the Jehovist has related, the 
latter cannot be posterior to the former, and the theory 
fails. K'ow, unhappily for the theory, the word Jeho- 
vah does occur in the Elohistic passages, and the Elo- 
hist does refer to the Jehovistic narrative. Thus in 
Genesis ii. 4, the two names occur together. " These 
are the generations of the heavens and the earth when 
they were created, in the day when Jehovah Elohim 
made the earth and the heavens." I^ow if this verse 
belongs to what precedes, then the following narrative, 
which has also the unusual union of the two names, 
was written by the Elohist, and the first three chapters 
are by one author. If it be written by the Jehovist, 
how comes it to have Elohim as well, and why does it 
differ both from Elohist and Jehovist documents by 
the union of the names ? Here is a difficulty which 
has divided all Germany, and arrayed Kationalist 
against Rationalist, and Orthodox against Orthodox, 
and for which there seems no hope of solution, unless 



EbsatV.] the mosaic EECOED OF CEEATION. 225 

violence be oiFered to the text, and men be persuaded, 
against the evidence of manuscripts and ancient ver- 
sions, that the words " These are the generations of the 
heavens and the earth " stood originally as the heading 
before the first verse of the first chapter, and that the 
word Elohim in ii. 4 is an interpolation of the Jeho- 
vist. Take another example : — Genesis v. is said to be 
Elohistic, and it is certain that Elohim^ Grod, occurs 
five times ; but in verse 29 appears the word Jehovah 
to disturb the theorist ; and not only is this word there, 
but the verse refers to the Jehovistic chapter iii. 17. 
"What is to be done? The verse stands in all the man- 
uscripts and ancient versions. But, if the Elohistic 
theory is to stand, it must be got rid of somehow. It 
is an interpolation, says the theorist ; it w^as put in by 
the compiler. In like manner the theorists cut off 
chapter vii. 9 — 24 from its context, and say. It is 
Elohistic. But lo ! in verse 16 stands " Jehovah." 
The same canon of the old Socinian criticism is again 
applied ; the unwelcome \vord is an interpolation. One 
instance more. The xlixth chapter is said to belong to 
a long Elohistic portion. But in the 18th verse occur 
those words of Jacob, " I have waited for thy salva- 
tion, O Jehovah." Again the same violence is re- 
peated. The disturbing verse is an interpolation. Is 
this criticism ? Is it a fair and legitimate proceeding 
to alter the text, and that not once, but frequently, in 
order to make it suit one's theory ? To discard the 
consent of manuscripts, ancient versions, all printed 
editions, and cry out, Interpolation, interpolation, with- 
out any authority at all ? There is no more certain 
sign of helpless prejudice or critical incompetence, 
than to have frequent recourse to violent and unau- 
thorized alteration of the text ; and yet without this 
the theory of the Elohistic and Jehovistic documents, 
even if it were unanimously received by modern critics, 
could not be made out. Arbitrary separations of what 
evidently belongs together, and unwarranted assertions 
of interpolation, prove its unsoundness. The variety 
of its modifications, one neutralizing the other, as has 
10* 



226 



AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 



been shown above, demonstrates the uncertainty and 
untrustworthiness of the results. 

4. But the theory rests upon an assumption totally 
false, that the names Elohim and Jehovah are synony- 
mous, and that they can be used indifferently, one for 
the other. The names are not synonymous, and cannot 
be so used. There is the same difference between 
Elohim and Jehovah, as between Deus and Jupiter^ 
or homo and Petrus. The one expresses the genus, the 
other stands for the individual, and is a proper name. 
Elohim answers to our own word God or Deity ^ and is, 
therefore, used of false Gods as well as of the true. 
Jehovah stands for the personal, living, self-revealing 
Being, and is explained in those two passages, Exod. 
iii. 14, " I am that I am ; " and xxxiv. 6, when, the 
Lord having said, " I will proclaim my name before 
thee," proclaimed " Jehovah, Jehovah, God [El] mer- 
ciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in 
goodness and truth ; " and can therefore be applied to 
none but the one true and eternal God, as is said, " I 
am Jehovah ; that is my name, and my glory will 
I not give to another." This distinction is strongly 
marked in the words of Elijah, " If Jehovah be Elohim, 
follow Him ; if Baal, then follow him." Here it would 
be impossible to interchange Elohim and Jehovah, or 
to say, " if Baal be Jehovah." There is an essential 
difference in signification, and, though Jehovah is the 
true God, and the true God Jehovah, and therefore 
sometimes either might be used, yet, in consequence 
of the essential difference, there are cases where there 
is a peculiar propriety in using one rather than the 
other ; and there are other cases in which one must be 
used, and the other cannot. As Jehovah is the proper 
name of God, it does not take a genitive case or a 
suffix. It is, therefore, impossible to say in Hebrew, 
"the Jehovah of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," or "My, 
thy, our Jehovah." In such cases, Elohim must be 
used, as "The Elohim, God of Abraham," &c. "My 
Elohim, my God, our Elohim, our God," &c. Again, 
as Jehovah signifies the self-revealing, that word can- 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC KECORD OF CEEATION. 227 

not occur in the mouth of those to whom He has not 
revealed himself, nor, ordinarily, in the mouth of 
Hebrews speaking to such ; and, therefore, when Moses 
and Aaron use it to Pharaoh, they add " the God of 
Israel " to make it intelligible. But still Pharaoh asks, 
-" "Who is Jehovah ? I know not Jehovah ; " and they 
explain, "The Elohim, God of the Hebrews hath met 
with us." There is no room here to go through and 
illustrate all the peculiarities of these Divine names. 
But what has been said is sufficient to show that the 
exclusive use of Elohim cannot be received as a char< 
acteristic mark to distinguish one author from the other, 
inasmuch as, in the cases above enumerated and others, 
the use of Elohim is compulsory ; and neither Moses, 
nor Samuel, nor Isaiah, could in these cases leave out 
Elohim, and substitute Jehovah. Thus, in Gen. xl. 8, 
the word Elohim occurs once, when Joseph says to the 
Egyptian prisoners, " Do not interpretations belong to 
God, Elohim f " Here Jehovah could not be used. 
Again, in xli., the word Elohim occurs eight times. In 
six of them the use w^as compulsory. In xliii. 23 it 
occurs twice with suffixes or genitive, and no other 
w^ord could be used, and so in other instances."^ And, 
therefore, the use of the w^ord cannot be the character- 
istic peculiarity of one author. In the first cliapter of 
Genesis, Moses might have used either Elohim or Jeho- 
vah, except in the 27th verse, where Elohimj was com-- 
pulsory. But in the opening of the Divine teaching, 
it w^as necessary to make clear that God is Creator, 
that the world was not eternal, nor independent ; and 
also that Jehovah is not one among many — not the 
national God of the Hebrew^s— but that Jehovah the 
Self-revealer, and Elohim the Almighty Creator, are 
one. Therefore, in the first chapter, Elohiin is used 
throughout. The Deity is the Creator. But in ap- 
proaching that part of the narrative where the personal 
God enters into relations with man, and where Jehovah 

* Ewald in his 'Composition der Genesis,' and Hengstenberg in his 
'Authentie des Pentateuchs,' vol. i. pp. 306-391, have examined all the in- 
stances where the names occur, and explained the propriety or the necessity. 



228 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay V. 

was necessary, Moses unites the names, and says, " Je- 
hovah Elohim, the Loed God." Had he suddenly used 
Jehovah alone, there might have been a doubt as to 
whether Jehovah was not different from Elohim. The 
union of the two names proves identity, and this being 
proved, from the fourth chapter on, Moses drops this 
union and sometimes employs Jehovah^ sometimes Elo- 
him^ as occasion, propriety, and the laws of the Hebrew 
language require. The use of these names, therefore, 
can prove nothing against the unity of the narrative. 

5. But, in truth, independently of all philological 
criticism, the unity of the first two chapters of Genesis 
may be proved by comparing one with the other. They 
do not contain two distinct accounts of " the Creation." 

The second chapter does not narrate the creation of 
heaven or earth, or light, firmament, sun, moon, or 
stars, sea, or dry land, fish, or creeping things. The 
second chapter, therefore, is so far from being a cos- 
mogony, that it is not even a geogony, and, therefore, the 
fourth verse of the second chapter, " These are the 
generations of the heavens and the earth when they 
were created, in the day that the Lord God (Jehovah 
Elohim) made the earth and the heavens," cannot be 
the title or summary of what follows, but are an exact 
recapitulation of what is narrated in the first chapter. 
They mention first the creation of '' the heavens and 
the earth;" second, the making of " the earth and heav- 
ens " in the very order in which the process of creation 
is related in that chapter, but of which not one word is 
said in what follows. The second chapter is obviously 
not an account " of the creation," but of the particu- 
lars of the formation of man, and his early history. 
Ewald said long ago, " The aim of the first connected 
narrative (ch. i. 1 — ii. 3) is to exhibit God as the Crea- 
tor of the universe. . . The author then passes over 
from the perfected picture of the created universe, to 
that which must have been to him, as to all writers of 
history, the most worthy of note, to the history of man. 
Yet he closes the first picture with the words (ii. 4), 
' These are the generations of the heavens and of the 



EsbatV.] the mosaic EECOED OF CItExiTION. 229 

earth.' " ^ The second chapter is, therefore, an integral 
part of a relation contained in the three first chapters, 
connected with the chapter by verse four, and prepar- 
ing for the account of the Fall by telling us beforehand 
of Paradise, of the tree of knowledge, the prohibition 
to eat of it, and of the formation of the w^oman. Indeed, 
most recent writers admit, that whether there be differ- 
ent sources or not, the author has formed them into one 
narrative ; there cannot, therefore, be contradiction. 
There are differences to be explained by the different 
objects wdiich the author had in view. In the first, his 
object was to give an outline of the history of the uni- 
verse ; in the second, to relate the origin and primitive 
history of man, so far as it was necessary, as a prepara- 
tion for the history of the Fall. In the former, there- 
fore, all the steps of creation are treated in chronological 
order. In the latter, only so much is alluded to as is 
necessary for the author's purpose, and in the order 
which that purpose required. 

6. So much for modern criticism. But the new 
theology also asserts that the Mosaic cosmogony is 
contradicted by the discoveries and progress of science, 
and that, therefore, Moses could not have been inspired. 
This is a straightforward objection, deserves a fair and 
full consideration, and ought not to be met with what 
objectors can only regard as evasions. Such are the 
assertions, that the first chapter of Genesis is poetry, or 
a series of seven prophetic visions, f or the mere cloth- 
ing of a theological truth. To urge such suppositions 
is not to defend the ark of God, but to abandon it to 
the enemy. If the first chapter of Genesis be poetry, 
or vision, or parable, it is not historic truth, which is 
just what objectors assert. There are in this chapter 
none of the peculiarities of Hebrew poetry. The style 
is full of dignity, but it is that of prose narrative. There 
is no mention of prophetic vision, no prophetic formula 
employed. It is not said, "The vision wdiich Moses 

* ' Composition der Genesis,' pp. 192, 193. To this division Ewald adheres, 
as appears from his Essays on the subject in his ' Jahrbuch' for 1848, p. 77, 
and 1849, p. 132. 

t So Kurz, and after him, Hugh Miller. 



230 ^I^S TO FAITH, [Essay V. 

saw," nor '' I lifted up my eyes, and behold." The 
prophet or historian is kept entirely out of sight, and 
the narrative begins at once withont any preface, " In 
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," 
and then goes to the account of Paradise, the birth of 
Cain and Abel, &c., ^vithout any break or note of tran- 
sition from vision to history. The Book of Genesis is 
history. It is the historical Jntrodnction to the four 
following books of the Pentateuch, or rather, to all fol- 
lowing revelation, and the first chapter, as the insepa- 
rable beginning of the whole, must be historical also. 
When the Lord recapitulates its contents in the Fourth 
Commandment, and makes it the basis of the ordinance 
of the Sabbath, He stamps it as real history. To sup- 
pose a moral, or even a ceremonial command, based 
upon a poetic picture, or a vision, or an ideal narrative, 
would be absurd. The Lord also treats " the first chap- 
ters of Genesis" as real and authoritative history, when 
He makes Gen. i. 27, and ii. 23, 24, the foundation of 
His doctrine concerning marriage and divorce. As 
history, therefore, they must be received, whatever 
difficulties that reception may involve. Some, indeed, 
hold that in reading the Bible, a distinction is to be 
made between statements relating to religion, and those 
relating to physics, that the former are to be received, 
and the latter disregarded, as " The purpose of revela- 
tion is to teach man what he cannot find out by his 
unassisted reason, but not physical truths, for the dis- 
covery of which he has faculties." But, what are we 
to do when a truth is both religious and physical, such 
as " God created the heavens and the earth " ? And 
how are we to distinguish between what can be and 
what cannot be discovered by man's natural faculties? 
On the one hand, the leading intellects of Germany are 
still disputing about the eternity of the universe, and 
the relation of the finite to the absolute ; and on the 
other, Deists and Theists, and Pationalists, teach that 
all religious and moral truths can be discovered, and 
has been discovered, by man's natural powers — can be 
known in no other way, and that, therefore, revelation 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOKD OF CKEATION. 231 

is unnecessary. Besides, if the first chapter of Genesis 
be not given to teach ns the facts and order of creation, 
why is it there at all in all its circumstantiality ? Are 
we to believe that Divine revelation begins with an 
unscientific misstatement of physical truth ? If the first 
chapter be the offspring of human error, where does 
Divine truth begin ? This principle raises many new 
difficulties, and removes none. We, therefore, adhere 
to the plain grammatical statement, as a Divine revela- 
tion of the origin of the universe, not yet superseded by 
the theories of the speculative philosophy, nor anti- 
quated by the discoveries of modern science. 

T. The first supposed difficulty in the Mosaic state- 
ment is the age of the world. According to the teach- 
ings of Geology and Astronomy, the existence of the 
heavens and the earth is to be reckoned by myriads of 
thousands of years. According to Moses, it is alleged, 
they are of yesterday. To know whether this difficulty 
is real, it is first necessary to know what Moses has 
actually said. And here it is not intended to propose 
anything new, but to revert to the ancient exposition 
of the phrase, " In the beginning," for upon this the 
question really turns. The first proposition is " In the 
beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and 
here it is necessary to observe that Heshith^ the He- 
brew word for " beginning," is in the original without 
the definite article. Moses says, " In Keshith [not in 
the Iieshith\ Elohim created the heavens and the 
earth. " The antiquity and correctness of this reading 
are proved by the Septuagint, Chaldee, and Syriac 
versions. 

LXX. ''Ev apxfi, Chaldee T'^'ips, Syriac ^ ^^-;^^ 
and so it is also found in the Evangelist's allusion, John 
i. 1. The uniformity of the reading, and the care with 
which it had been preserved for centuries — notwith- 
standing the natural temptation to supply the article — 
testify that there was an uniform traditional meaning 
attached to it, different from that possible, if the word 
had the article. What this meaning is, is plainly seen 
in the first verse of St. John's Gospel. ^N'ow that Socin- 



232 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay V, 

ian exegesis is a thing of the past, all divines, English 
and foreign, agree that St. John here makes a pointed 
reference to Gen. i. 1, and that in the words iv dp)(j}, 
" In the beginning," he expresses Duration or Time^ 
previous to Creation. So Dean Alford, " 'Ev cip')(fi =: 
irpo rod tov kq(j\xqv elvai.^^ "In the beginning" is 
equivalent to " Before the world was. " Tholuck says 
that the phrase expresses " Eternity a parte ante. " 
Meyer also takes it of duration before time, and trans- 
lates it YovzeitlicKkeit (pre-temporality), and says that it 
is equivalent to the Septuagint version of Prov. viii. 
23, " In the beginning, before he made the earth ; " 
and to the words of our Lord " Before the world w^as; " 
and of St. Paul " Before the foundation of the world " 
(Ephes. i. 4). De Wette has nearly the same words 
and the same references. Lucke also says that the 
phrase " In the beginning " includes the idea of pre- 
mundane existence {des Yorweltliclieii)^ and answers to 
" Before the world was " (John xvii. 5). All are agreed 
that " Beginning " refers to duration or time^ not to 
order^ and that it is indefinite in its signification, and 
may mean previous eternity, or previous time, accord- 
ing to the subject spoken of. * They who believe that 
St. John was inspired will receive his interpretation 
of the first words of Genesis as infallibly correct, and 
therefore interpret them there as in the Gospel. But 
even if St. John be regarded as an ordinary writer 
asserting an important truth, his adoption of the inter- 
pretation proves that it was known to the Jews of his 
time, and this is further proved by the nearly contem- 
porary testimony of the Targum. 

Its author Onkelos gives the same meaning, and 
proves that it was then the received interpretation. 
For the Hebrew B^reshith he gives B^kadmin (•ji's'ipn) 
in antiquities^ or former tir)ies. The word K^dam^ 
equiv^alent to the Hebrew Kedem. signifies, as Buxtorf 
says, " ante^ antiquitas, prioritas^ jprincijpiumP In tiie 
plural number, as Onkelos here has it, it signifies, not 

* Sim-ilar is the meaning of the words in the Doxology, '' As it was in the 
beginning, is now, and ever shall be." 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CEEATION. 233 

order, but time, " ancient times ^fornfier times^ eternity. ^'^ 
For example (Gen. xxviii. 19), "Luz was the name of 
the city "pa'ipSa, from antiquities^ or former times.^'^ 
Again (Ps. Ixviii. 33), "To him that rideth upon the 
heavens of heavens of antiquity," the Chaldee has 
•j^^ipb^i, " that were from antiquities^ ors former times^^^ 
which our translators followed, and have rendered, 
"the heavens of heavens which were of old. '^'^ Again 
(Deut. xxxiii. 27), " The Eternal God (literally, the God 
of antiquity or priority) ; " Onkelos has, " The God 
who is from antiquities^ -pTa^p^^'i." Here the word is 
applied to eternity/'^ When, therefore, Onkelos trans- 
lates the first word of Gen. i. 1, by Blmdmin in the 
plural, and without the article, he meant, in antiquities^ 
reformer times or duration^ of old. 

The LXX. use iv dpxy in the same way, and thereby 
prove that this interpretation was far more ancient than 
Onkelos. Thus, in Ezek. xxxvi. 11, they employ dp^f} 
to render Kadmah {former state)., and give as the 
parallel euTrpoadev for Bishah. nearly related to Resliitli, 
KaroiKto) u/xa? co? to ev ap')(r] v/icov, kul ev TTQirjcro) v/ia^ 
cbaTrep tcl e/xTrpoaOev v/jlmv. 

Again, in Pro v. viii. 23, they apply it to express 
duration antecedent to creation. TIpo rov alcovo^; 
ide/ieXLcocri fie' iv dp')(fj irpo rov rrjv jrjv iroLrjaai. 

In Deut. xxxiii. 15, it signifies antiquity. For 
" ancient mountains," literally " mountains of antiquity," 
the LXX. have diro /wpv^rj'; opiwv dpxv'^} parallel to 
^ovvMv devdcov. According, then, to the LXX., " in 
the beginning" means ^^ in former duration^ of old P 

This is also the meaning of the Hebrew. The word 
Eeshith having, according to its form, an abstract 
meaning, and coming from Bosh or Besh^ head, signi- 
fies first of all, as Gesenius says, " the being head ; " 
and, therefore, applied to rank or quality, would ex- 
press ^''superiority^'' — to order, ^'' priority ^"^ like its 
synonym tia^p, whose first meaning is priority — to time, 
" anteriority.^'' To " former time," " state at a former 
time," it refers in Job xlii. 12, " The Lord blessed the 

* Compare Jonathan on Micah v. 2. 



234 -^I^S TO FAITH. - [Essay Y. 

latter end of Job more than his beginning," where the 
LXX. translate more exactly, o Se KvpLo<; evXoyrjcre ra 
eaxciTa 'IcojS rj ra e/i7rpo(70ev, and. so Hirzel has "ni^nx, 
die spatere, n^rx-i, die liiihere Lebenszeit." So in Jer. 
xxviii. 1, " in the beginning {IlesJdth) of the reign of 
Zedekiah," 'beginning does not mean the first day, nor 
the first year, bnt the former part of his reign,' as the 
prophet immediately adds, " in the fourth year." This 
is also the meaning in Isai. xlvi. 10, " declaring the 
end from the beginning," properly, " declaring futmity 
from former time," as is explained by the following 
clanse — " and from ancient times the things which are 
not done." According then, tO the Hebrew, the mean- 
ing of the first verse of Genesis is, " In ResJiith (ante- 
riority), i.e., in former times, of old, God created the 
heavens and the earth ;" and the article is omitted 
to exclude the application of the word to the order of 
creation. This is also the sense given in other words 
by the Psalmist (cii. 26). "Of old (D-^isb* formerly) 
hast thou laid the foundation of the earth." 

The sum, then, of all that has been said is, that the 
words, "In the beginning," refer to "time or duration," 
not to order — and thus, therefore, the first Averse does 
not mean, "At first God created the heavens and the 
earth," nor, "In the beginning of creation he created 
the heavens and the earth," but " Of old, in former du- 
ration, God created the heavens and the earth." How 
long ago is not said. The Hebrew word is indefinite, 
and can include millions or milliards of years just as 
easily as thousands. The statement of Moses is, there- 
fore, not contrary to the discoveries of geology, which 
alleges the earth to have existed for myriads of years 
before the creation of man. Moses's words are big 
enough to take in times indefinite, exceeding the pow- 
ers of human comprehension. They also answer the 
more ancient objectors, who found it absurd that God 
created nothing in previous eternity, and had remained 
inactive until a few thousand years ago.f The words 

* Compare Isa. xli. 26, where c^;^?^ is parallel to t^'^yi. 

+ See Augustine ' de Civit. Dei,' Lib. xi. 4, 5 j * Confess.' xi. 10. Com- 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC KECOED OF CKEATION. 235 

of Moses, riglitly understood, say just the contrary. 
They leave " the when " of creation undefined. 

8. But though thus comprehensive as to the time, 
they are precise as to the fact of creation. Moses says 
" God created," and Bara^ the word here used, is pe- 
culiar. There are three words employed in the old 
Testament in reference to the production of the w^orld 
— Bard^ he created; Yatzdr^ he formed; Asdh^ he 
made — between which there is this difference, that the 
two last may be, and are, used of men. The first word 
Bard is never predicated of any created being, angel 
or man, but exclusively appropriated to God, and God 
alone is called Bore s^'^'a Creator. Creation is therefore, 
according to the Hebrew, a Divine act — something that 
can be performed by God alone. In the next place, 
though, according to its etymology, it does not necessa- 
rily imply a creation out of nothing, it does signify the 
Divine production of something new^ something that 
did not exist before. See Numb. xvi. 30 ; Jer. xxxi. 22. 
And therefore Gesenius says, in his ' Thesaurus,' " In 
that common disputation of interpreters and theologians 
concerning the creation out of nothing, some appeal to 
this word [Bara] as if it could be inferred from its 
etymology, or proper signification, that in the first 
chapter of Genesis, not a creation out of nothing, but 
a conformation of eternal matter is taught. But, from 
what has been said, it will be abundantly plain, that 
the use of this verb in Kal is altogether difterent from 
its primary signification, and that it is more used of 
new production (see Gen. ii. 3) than of the conformation 
and elaboration of matter. But that in the first verse 
of Genesis the first creation of the world out of nothing, 
and in a rude and unformed state, and in the remainder 
of the first chapter the elaboration and disposition of 
the recently created mass is set forth, is proved by the 
connection of things in this w^hole chapter. Thus, also, 
the Babbis (as may be seen in Aben Esra to Gen. i. 1) 
say that ' creation is a production of something from 

pare also 'Origen de Principiis,' iii. 5, and 'Calvin's Commentaries on 
Genesis.' 



236 ^II^S TO FAITH. [-EssayY. 

nothing.' " This is also the explanation given in the 
Psalms. In Ps. cxlviii. 5 we read, " For He, He com- 
manded, and they were created." The parallel passage 
(Ps. xxxiii. 9) says, " For He, He said, and it existed 
("fT'i). He, He commanded, and it stood." It is true 
that the how of creation, the link between the Divine 
will and the realisation, is not made known. Perhaps 
to finite minds it is incomprehensible. But, notwith- 
standing, the word Greation is more than a name for 
our ignorance of the mode of production. It teaches 
that neither the world, nor the matter of which it is 
composed, is eternal or self-existent — that the universe 
is not a pantheistic emanation, but a work of the Divine 
will and power; and this Mosaic doctrine, in accord- 
ance with all sound reason, has not been shaken by 
any discoveries or theories of science. Even though 
the nebulous theory were demonstrably certain; though 
all the starry hosts were mere agglomerations of ele- 
mentary matter, which was once diffused like " an 
universal fire-mist" throughout all space, and impressed 
w^ith fixed laws, or endowed with self-evolving powers, 
yet there must be a maker of that fire-mist and its fifty- 
five elementary substances — there must be a law-giver, 
who imposed those laws, or communicated those powers, 
and who produced that change of temperature, with- 
out which agglomeration would have been impossible — 
that is, there must have been a Creator, and therefore 
the words of Moses would still be true, " God created 
the heavens and the earth." '' Sic philosophi debuerunt, 
si forte eos primus aspectus mundi conturbaverat, pos- 
tea cum vidissent motus ejus finitos et sequabiles, om- 
niaque ratis ordinibus moderata, immutabilique con- 
stantia, intelhgere inesse aliquem non solum habitato- 
rem in hac celesti ac divina domo, sed etiam Pectorem 
et Moderatorem, et tanquam Architectum tanti operis 
tantique muneris." ''^ 

9. In order to understand the Mosaic narrative, the 
next thing to be considered is the meaning of the 
phrase " The heavens and the earth," and the purpose 
of the whole verse. Some take it as a title or summary 

* * De Nat. Deorum,' Lib. ii. c. 35. 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CEEATION. 23 V 

of the contents of the chapter. But this view is for- 
bidden by the conjunction "and," with which the 
second verse begins. " In the beginning God created 
the heavens and the earth. 2. And the earth was with- 
out form, and void." This "and" makes the second 
verse a continuation of the narrative begun in the first. 
The proposition, "And the earth was without form, 
and void," implies that the earth was in existence, and 
that something had been said of it with which the 
" and " is the connecting link. Besides, if the first 
verse be not a part of the narrative, but only a heading, 
the creation of the earth is not mentioned at all in the 
narrative itself. The first verse is, therefore, not a 
summary, but a part of the history of creation. 

Others suppose that the first verse describes the 
creation of the materials out of which heaven and earth 
were afterwards formed. But this is simply to put into 
the verse what is not there. " Heaven and earth " 
never mean materials, and if they did, that meaning 
would not agree with the context. The connecting 
" and " of the second verse shows that the earth of the 
second verse is that earth spoken of in the first verse, 
not the materials. Moses is very precise and clear in 
bis statements, and as he names " the heavens and the 
earth," no expositor can legitimately give that phrase 
a meaning whicli it has not in any other place in the 
Old Testament. The first question then, here, is, what 
Moses intended by " the heavens," for the word is plural, 
and has no singnlar in Hebrew. That something diflfer- 
ent from the firmament is intended is plain from the 
order of the narrative. It is not said, God made the 
earth and the heavens, but of old, in former duration, 
God 'made the heavens and the earth. Then it is re- 
lated that the earth was without form, and void ; dark- 
ness was upon the face of the deep ; the Spirit of God 
moved uj)on the face of the waters ; God said. Let there 
be light. Then, on the second day, God made the 
firmament, and called it heavens. The heavens of the 
first verse were made in former duration, before the 
moving of the Spirit, before the appearance of light. 



238- -^1^9 '^^ FAITH [EsAT V. ' 

The heavens of the seventh and eighth verses, were 
made on the second day, after the earth and after light. 
The difference of time proves a difference of subjects, 
jnst as there is a difference between the earth of the 
first verse, which means the whole terraqueous globe, 
and the earth of the tenth verse, which is only the dry 
land. And this difference between the heavens of the 
first verse and the firmament is strongly marked in the 
fourth verse of the second chapter — " These are the 
generations of the heavens and the earth, when they 
were created, in the day that the Lord God made the 
earth and the heavens." In the first half reference is 
made to the primitive creation, and therefore the order 
of the first verse is preserved. In the latter half refer- 
ence is made to the creation of the earth in its empty 
state, and the subsequent making of the firmament; 
and, therefore, earth is put first, before heavens, an 
inversion that must be intentional, as the phrase " heav- 
en and earth " is in Scripture a standing formula, but 
the inversion " earth and heaven " occurs only once 
more in the Bible (Ps. cxlviii. 13). The first expres- 
sion, " the heavens and the earth," comprehends all 
created things, the nniverse ; the second, " earth and 
heavens," takes in only the earth and that portion of 
the universe immediately connected with it. The ob- 
ject of the historian is first to assert that God is the 
Creator of all created things, invisible as well as visi- 
ble ; then to narrate the manner in which this earth 
was prepared for the abode of man by the same Al- 
mighty Being, so as to leave no room for the eternity 
of matter, nor yet for two Creators, one of whom made 
the high and holy spiritual world, the other, this lower 
and material world. The Jews knew that there were 
other heavens, as those where angels dwell, mentioned 
xxviii. 12-17, whither, perhaps, Elijah was carried (2 
Kings ii. 1), and the heavens where is the throne of 
God (Ps. xi. 4 ; ciii. 19), called also the heavens of 
heavens. That these heavens and the angels were 
made before the earth and the firmament appears 
from Job xxxviii. 7, " When the morning stars sang 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CREATION. 239 

togetlier, and all tlie sons of God shouted for joy." 
They are, therefore, inchided in the statement of the 
first verse, " Of old God made the heavens and the 
earth," as they certamly are hi the first verse of the 
second chapter, where Moses, summing up the entire 
work of creation of the universe, the primitive creation 
and the six days' work, says, " Thus the heavens and 
the earth were finished, and all the host of them." The 
expression " host of heaven " sometimes means the heav- 
enly bodies, sometimes angels : thus, in Deut. xix. 4, 
it evidently refers to the former ; in 1 Kings xxii. 19, 
Isa. xxiv 21, Ps. cxlviii. 2, it as plainly refers to the 
latter, who are called " Jehovah's host " (Josh. v. 14, 
15), and " God's host " (Gen. xxxii), where the corre- 
sponding word n:\n73 is used. Therefore, in this sum- 
ming up of creation, '' all the host of them " is men- 
tioned to include angels, often referred to in this Book 
of Genesis, and to teach that they were not independent 
beings, but creatures of God. According to the Bible, 
then, this earth is not the centre of the universe. Long 
before it was fashioned for man there were heavens, and 
morning stars, and angels ; regions more glorious than 
the earth, heavens more ancient than the firmament, 
heavenly inhabitants who excel in strength, and who 
looked on in wonder and adoration when they beheld 
the earth fashioned by the Creator. The ken of Moses 
and the Hebrews was not limited to this earth, nor their 
idea of duration to the time that man has existed. They 
knew that the earth in its present condition was later 
than the heavens and their host, and the human race 
young w^hen compared with the angels of God. 

10. Yekse 2. — The next statement made by Moses 
is so far from being in opposition to the discoveries of 
science that it is an extraordinary anticipation of what 
geology teaches. It presents to us the earth before its 
habitation by man, covered with water, and utterly de- 
void of inhabitants or life. " The earth was [or, as 
others translate, liacL 'become'^'] desolation and empti- 
ness, and darkness upon the face of the raging deep, 

* Dathius. Post base vero terra facta erat vasta et edserta. 



240 -^^^S "^^ FAITH, [EsbatV. 

and tlie Spirit of God brooding npon tlie face of the 
waters." Yery similar are tlie statements of geologists, 
who, tliongli believing that the earth was first in a state 
of igneons fusion, suppose that before the various for- 
mations and deposits began, it was first entirely covered 
with water. So Pfafi" says, '^ We soon perceive not only 
that by far the greatest part of our earth was under 
water, but that to water it owes its origin, and that 
under water the entire gradual formation of these 
mighty masses took place." And again, " The earth 
was at first a molten fiery sphere, over which existed 
a thick atmosphere, containing all the water of the 
earth. In consequence of cooling a firm crust was 
formed, which was everywhere uniformly covered by 
water, condensed in like maimer by the same cooling 
process."* The conflicts between the waters and the 
fiery heat, as the crust of the earth was broken, fell 
in, or was uiDlieaved, are vividly described by M. 
d'Orbigny, and his account answers well to the words 
of Moses, "The earth was desolation and emptiness, 
and darkness upon the face of the raging deep." It 
is not necessary to accept this theory of " a molten 
fiery sphere," as the ^eptunists describe a somewhat 
similar state, produced by water only, and a sober 
though able author speaks of it only as a guess. 
" Geology . . . may guess at conditions of origi- 
nal igneous fluidity or aqueous plasticity in the mass, 
and may hint at some great law of secular contraction ; 
but it must be confessed that on these and similar points 
science is yet unable to ofi'er anything like the certainty 
of demonstration."t But the great facts of the sub- 
mersion of the earth, and its~ desolation and emptiness, 
were stated by Moses more than SOOO years ago, and 
his statements have not only not been disproved, but 
have been confirmed, by the deductions of modern 
scientific research. But how this state of " igneous 
fluidity or aqueous plasticity," and consequent desola- 
tion and emptiness, arose ; whether God created the 

* Pfaff's ' Schopfungsgeschichte/ pp. 3 and 615. See also D'Orbigny, 
* Cours elementaire,' torn, ii., Fascic, i. 261 ; Lardner's ' Pre- Adamite Earth/ 
§ 1S7 ; ' Essays and Reviews,' pp. 213, 14. 

+ Page's 'Advanced Text-book of Geology,' p 25. 



Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 241 

earth desolate and empty, or whether it became so in 
consecpence of some mighty catastrophe, neither l^ep- 
tunists nor Yulcanists can tell us, nor has Moses ex- 
pressly declared, though the latter appears to some to 
be implied in his words. There seems to be a contrast 
between the state of the heavens and that of the earth. 
" Of old God created the heavens and the earth. And 
the earth was desolation and emptiness," not so the 
heavens. If Dathins's translation, " The earth had be- 
come desolation and emptiness,"* be correct, it would 
follow this was not the earth's original state. How the 
change from the chaotic, the desolate and the empty, 
was effected, science cannot tell. Moses informs us 
that it was by the action of the Divine Spirit. " The 
Spirit of God hrooding on the face of the waters," not 
" the wind of God," as the verb racJiaph [to brood] is 
never used of wind. " The Spirit streamed forth from 
God upon the chaos, communicated to it life-power, 
and made it capable of development at God's bidding, 
and of bringing forth plants and animals. For, accord- 
ing to the Old Testament, the Spirit of God is the 
quickening principle of the world, and all life is an 
outgoing from God ; according to Psalm civ. 30, even 
the life of the vegetable kingdom."f 

11. Verses 3, and 14-19. — The next Mosaic state- 
ment is found in verses 3-5, " And God said. Let there 
be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, 
that it was good, and God separated between the light 
and between the darkness. And God called the light 
day, and the darkness Tie called night. And evening 
happened, and morning happened, one day,":}: and has 

* This translation is supported by the fact that the verb iiTf is, in some 
twenty places in this chapter, correctly translated by yiuofiui and j^o, and not 
by e</xi or sum, and has elsewhere, without a following b, the same significa- 
tion, e.g. Isai. Ixiv. 5, 9, where see Ewald, Zunz, and Rosenmiiller. That the 
earth was not originally desolate also seems to be implied in Isai. xlv. 18. 
"He created not the earth a desolation" [Tohu]. 

t Knobel in loc. Comp. Gesenius, * Thesaurus,' in Rad. t]n"i. "De 
Spiritu Dei. qui rudi creationis mdiiincuhdbat f ovens et vivificans." 

X The exact force of the Hebrew words, especially of the verb Tr^T^fio, is 

more apparent in the LXX. than in our Authorized Version. Kal etTrev 6 

6e6s Tevr]Qi]T(a (pus, Koi iyiv^TO (pas. Kal dSev 6 6ehs rh (p&s on KaXov, 

RoL 5iex(^pt(r€v 6 9ehs am jxeaov rod (pcarhs koI aua fxiffov rod (TkStovs' koI 

11 



242 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay T. 

given occasion to many objections. Celsns found it 
strange tliat Moses should speak of days before the ex- 
istence of the snn.^^ " How did God create the light 
before the sun ? " asked Yoltaire. " How did He make 
the day before the sun was made ? "f '' Modern as- 
tronomy," says D. F. Strauss, " found it contrary to 
order, that the earth shouhi not only have been created 
before the sun, but should also, besides day and night, 
have distinction of the elements and vegetation before 
the sun." ^ " Light and the measurement of time are 
represented as existing before the manifestation of the 
sun, and this idea, although repugnant to our modern 
knowledge, has not in former times appeared absurd," 
is the objection of ' Essays and Eeviews ;'§ and, as is 
evident, is not the result of modern science, having 
been broached already by Celsus. As, however, recent 
writers give modern science the credit of it, it becomes 
necessary to ask, what does modern science teach with 
regard to the relative ages of the earth and the sun ? 
The answer is, E"othing, absolutely nothing as a scien- 
tific certainty. Whether sun and earth were created 
simultaneously, and in their present relations — or, 
whether the earth, already created, wandered within 
the range of solar attraction, or whether, after the sun 
existed, the earth was called forth within that range, 
science does not know. It has, however, without any 
reference to the Book of Genesis, proposed a theory, 
which has been accepted by some of the most scientific 
men of these days as highly probable. || Had it been 
devised for the express purpose of removing the sup- 
posed difficuties of the Mosaic account, it could hardly 
have been more to the purpose. It supposes that the 

eKdXecrev 6 6ehs rh (pcos riiiipav KoX Tb (Tkotos indx^ae vvKra, KoX lyivero 
kcrtrepa Kot iyei/ero Trpm, rjfxcpa fxia, 

* Origen ' contra Celsum,' vi. 60, torn. i. 678. 

t Voltaire's Works, vol. xxxiii. 403. 

X ' Glaubenslehre,' vol. i. p. 622. § P. 219. 

II Of the theory in its present form La Place is the author. Perhaps the 
first suggestion came from Sir W. Herschel. It has been adopted by the 
great German astronomer, Madler, and extended to comets. It has been 
defended by Pfaflf, and its truth has been taken for granted by Humboldt, 
* Cosmos,' i. 85, 90, iv. 163. It is also advocated by the author of Vestiges 
of the Natural History of Creation.' 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOKD OF CEEATION. 243 

"whole solar system was originally one mass uf vapoury 
or nebulous matter, wliicli, according to the laws of 
gravitation, assumed the form of an immense sphere. 
This sphere received (from w^ithout) an impulse w^hich 
caused it to revolve on its axis from west to east. In 
consequence of this revolving motion, it became flat- 
tened at the poles and swollen in the equatorial region, 
and in consequence of the greatness of the centrifugal 
force at the equator, and the contemporaneous conden- 
sation and contraction of the nebulous mass, a free 
revolving ring, similar to that of Saturn, detached it- 
self in the region of the equator. This ring not being 
of uniform density, and in consequence of contraction, 
broke in one or more places, and these fragments, in 
obedience to the laws of gravitation, became a sphere 
or spheres, that is, a planet, or planets, all necessarily 
revolving from west to east, round the parent mass. 
Another ring was formed in like manner, and another 
planet came into existence, and so on until the whole 
solar system was complete. A similar process took 
place with regard to some of the planets, and thus they 
got their moons. "^^ 

Now, according to this theory, not only the earth, 
but all the planets of our system, existed before the sun 
in its present condition. As these planets are now not 
self-illuminating, it may be supposed that the rings, 
when detached from the original nebulous mass, were 
dark also, and therefore that the equatorial matter of 
the parent nebulous sphere of wdiich they were com- 

* La Place, 'Exposition du Systeme du Monde,' 6^™^ edition, nofe vii. pp. 
465 and sqq. ; Pfafi''s ' Schopfun'gsgeschichte,' Kap. xiii. ; Humboldt's ' Cos- 
mos,' as above. This theory is also applied by La Place and others to account 
for the zodiacal light. M. Plateau has furnished an ingenious experimental 
verification. He mixed alcohol and water until the mixture was of the same 
specific gravity as oil. The mixture was then put into a glass box, and a 
certain quantity of oil introduced, which immediately took the form of a 
globe. He now applied an axis, which passed through the axis of the oil 
globe, and caused the box to rotate rapidly. In consequence of the rotation 
the oil globe flattened at the poles and swelled out at the equator. A more 
rapid motion disengaged a ring of oil, revolving in the same direction as the 
oil globe. This ring broke, and the fragments formed globes or planets ro- 
tating on their axes, and revolving round the parent globe. See Pfaflf, p. 
818 ; also ' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,' reprint of sixth edi- 
tion, pp. 11-14. 



244 ^I-DS TO FAITH. [Essay y. 

posed was also devoid of liglit—tliat therefore the sun 
did not receive its kiminoTis atmosphere until all the 
planets had been detached. But, until this luminous 
atmosphere existed, they could not derive their light 
from the sun. If, on the other hand, it be supposed 
that these detached rings were luminous, and that the 
planets formed from them were luminous also, then 
the planets had a light of their own, independent of the 
sun. But however that be, so much follows from this 
theory, that the earth existed before the residuary 
parent globe could be called the sun, or could perform 
its office of luminary to the system. If the earth there- 
fore had light during this period, it must have been de- 
rived from some other source. That this is possible 
cannot now be denied. The discoveries with regard to 
heat, combustion, electricity, galvanism, show that 
there may be light independent of the sun. It is also 
now generally received that the sun itself is an opaque 
body, and that solar light proceeds from a luminous at- 
mosphere by which it is surrounded."^ The progress 
of science has, therefore, neutralized the objection that 
light could not exist before the sun. Indeed it has 
done more — it has proved the accuracy of the Mosaic 
language. Moses does not call the sun "6^r, light," but 
" Ma6)\ a place or instrument of light," a luminary, 
or candlestick,f just what modern science has discov- 
ered it to be. Thus, so far is the Mosaic doctrine of 
light from being opposed to recent discoveries, that if 
Moses had wished to describe the modern doctrine con- 
cerning light, he could not have expressed himself more 
happily. " Scripture does not say that God created the 
light, or made it, but said, ' Let it be, and it was ! ' 

* Arago's 'Astronomy,' pp. 56, 57; Pfaff, p. 621; Humboldt's 'Cosmos,' 
iii. 271, etc.; Walker's 'Physical Constitution of the Sun,' p. 6. The won- 
derful discoveries of Kirchoff and others in solar chemistry are supposed by 
some to confirm La Place's theory, and to prove that the earth was before the 
sun, and had a light of its own. 

t Knobel, in his Commentary, has "Lichtorte." For the meaning of 
nouns formed by prefixing n, see Ewald's 'Grammar,' §§ 337 and 339 : — "12 
may signify, tirst, that wherein anything happens, the place of action (the 

so-called rz loci) ; secondly, the instrument of action ; thirdly, the what 

of the action." Compare also 'Simonis 'Arcanum Formarum,' pp. 447-504; 
Gesenius's ' Lehrgeb.' p, 494, § 14, 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CKEATION. 245 

If, then, light be not a separate and definite body, but 
only vibrations or undulations of ether, somehow set in 
motion, the sacred writer could not have expressed its 
appearance in words more beautiful or more agreeable 
to truth." * 

JSTow, this theory of La Place may or may not be 
truc,t but it is an- offspring of modern science, and 
implies, just like the Mosaic account, the pre-existence 
of the earth before the sun became the luminary of the 
system. It does, indeed, also imply the pre-existence 
of the great parent nebulous globe, but this is not con- 
trary to the Mosaic account. Moses does not say that 
the body of the sun or moon and stars were created on 
the fourth day, but according to the Hebrew, " God 
said. Let there be light-holders in the firmament of the 
heaven, .... and let them be for light-holders in the 
firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 

and God made the two great light-holders and 

God gave in'^i, them in the firmament of heaven to 
give light upon the earth, and the stars." The Hebrew 
word, Asali, make, may signify " make ready, prepare, 
dress" (see Gesenius's ' Lexicon,' in verb.). The crea- 
tion of the sun or parent globe may be included in 
verse 1, and the work of the fourth day consisted in 
furnishing it with its luminous atmosphere. When 
this took place, and the sun began to shed its light^ 
then the moon, and the earth's fellow planets, " the 
stars," of verse 16, became luminaries also. The stars 
of this sixteenth verse are certainly difi'erent from those 
morning stars of which Job speaks, which were in ex- 
istence long before, and, as connected with the sun and 
moon, seem naturally to mean those belonging to the 
solar system, and w^hich received their light on the 
fourth day, when the sun became luminous. Having 

* ' Cosmogony of Moses,' by M. Marcel de Serres, Professor of Mineralogy 
and Geology at Montpellier, German edition, p. 45. Compare the language 
of St. Paul, 2 Cor. iv. 6. It is a curious fact that the Hebrew verb niiD, which 
signifies "to flow," also signifies "to shine, give light." •^*l^^3, light. Job 
iii. 4. 

t Compare Whewell's 'Indications of the Creator,' pp. 54, 1G2, and his 
* Philosophy of Discovery,' pp. 304, 305 ; ' Plurality of Worlds,' p. 199. 



246 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay V. 

tliiis seen liow modern science proves that the earth 
and light might exist, and, according to scientific 
theory, probably did exist before the snn, it is no 
longer difficult to conceive, how there might also be a 
measnre of time. , "What that measnre was, the length 
of that " one day," of which Moses speaks, it is now 
necessary to inquire. 

12. The question, then, naturally arises, How are 
we to understand the word " day " ? Is it a period of 
twenty-four hours, or is it an indefinite portioh of time? 
It is quite certain that the Almighty could not only 
arrange the earth in six ordinary days, but that He 
coukl create the whole universe by a momentary ex- 
ertic : of His power. The shortness of t] - time, 
therefore, is no valid objection. The contiaiy ob- 
jection that six ordinary days are too long, and that 
instantaneous creation is more worthy of Omnipotence, 
is just as strong. But nature and Scripture both 
teach us that it has pleased God to work gradually. 
His purpose was to fill the earth with inhabitants, and 
yet only a single pair was created. He announced the 
Redeemer in Paradise, but 4000 years passed away 
before the fulness of the time was come. It is His 
will that the whole earth shall be filled with the knowl- 
edge of Himself; but the difi'nsion of that knowledge 
has been left to gradual preaching and human instru- 
mentality. So in nature, trees, animals, and men 
have small beginnings, and require time to attain to 
perfection. This twofold course of the Divine procedure, 
in grace and in nature, guards us against the necessity 
of supposing that the arrangement of the earth was 
of necessity sudden, or a series of instantaneons ex- 
hibitions of Omnipotence. The facts of creation, how- 
ever, must be gathered from the Mosaic statement. 
Moses undoubtedly reckons six days. But it is an old 
and true observation, that in the Bible the word "day" 
often signifies undefined periods of time, as " the day 
of the Lord," "the day of vengeance," "that day," 
" the night is far spent, the day is at hand." In this 
narrative (ii, 4) the word takes in the whole time of the 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CEEATION. 247 

creative work. The first three days were certainly not 
measured by the interval between sunset and sunset,. 
for as yet the sun was not perfect, and had no light. 
The first day consisted of an alternation of light and 
darkness. But how long the light lasted, and how long 
the darkness until the next dawn, is not said. That 
there was an alternation of light and darkness, is re- 
lated in the words, "And God divided between the 
light and between the darkness. And God called the 
light Day, and the darkness Tie called E'ight." First 
there had been universal darkness. *' Darkness was 
upon the face of the deep." Out of this darkness God 
caused the light to shine. " God said, Let there be 
light, and there w^as light." It might, then, be sup- 
posed that this light being as universal as the darkness 
had been, there was now only continued, uninterrupted 
light in the world, and no darkness more until the new 
order of things commenced in the fourth day. The 
sacred historian guards against this supposition by 
relating that God divided between the light and the 
darkness, and that, in consequence of this division, 
evening happened, and morning happened, so that one 
stage of creation was divided from the other by an 
interval of darkness. The time of light in which the 
Divine work proceeded, He called Day, and the time of 
darkness He called JSTight.^' It was not a day measured 
by the presence of the sun's light, nor a night meas- 
ured by the absence of that light. There w^as light 
and there was darkness, and God called the light Day, 
and the darkness He called Night. The union of these 
two periods of light and darkness He calls " one day," 
"a second day," " a third day," to mark the distinctive 
breaks in the progress of the development of the world. 
In the fifth verse '^ day " is taken in two senses, — first, 
of the duration of the light ; and secondly, of the 
whole time of light and darkness together. But how 
long the light continued before it was evening, or how 
long the darkness continued before it was morning, or 

* Compare the words of our Lord, " I must work the works of Him that 
sent me, while it is day ; the night cometh when no man can work." 



248 -^^^^ "^^ FAITH. [Essay V. 

what was the duration of the two together, we are not 
told ; and so far there is nothing to cause us to con- 
chide that the whole was equal to twenty-four hours. 
It is true that David Strauss ^ urges the mention of 
"evening and morning," and thence concludes that 
they must be common days ; and there is a general 
persuasion that Moses here reckons according to the 
usual custom of the Hebrews, from evening to evening, 
supposing that the original darkness is the first even- 
ing, and that the space of time occupied by it and by 
the light which succeeded, is described as the first day. 
But this mistake arises from confining the attention to 
the English translation, which says ^' And the evening 
and the morning were the first day.*" f But the He- 
brew and the ancient versions have "And evening 
happened, and morning happened, one day." l^ow if 
the first day begins with the original darkness, then 
the first day consists of the original darkness, the light, 
and the evening that followed, ending with the morning, 
and thus the first day would have an evening at the 
beginning and an evening at the end. The mention of 
morning^ " evening happened and morning happened," 
ought to have guarded against this mistake. Evening 
and morning do not together make a day, but only a 
part of a day. The whole day is not complete until 
the following evening. But that Moses does not here 
reckon from evening to evening is proved from the 
account of the first day. The evocation of light is the 
prominent object of the first day's work, but it is after 
this evocation of light that it is said "And there was 
evening, and there was morning, one day." If, there- 
fore, the day began with the evening, light was created 
before that first day began, and there would be no 
account at all of what was done the first day. The 
first day must, therefore, be reckoned as beginning at 
the appearance of light, and continuing through the 
evening to the dawn. The appearance of light, with 

* 'Glaubenslehre,' p. 624. 

t This is plainly the source of error in 'Essays and Reyiews,' where it is 
said, " The space of time occupied by the original darkness and the light 
which succeeded, is described as the first day." P. 219. 



Essay V.] THE MOSAIC KECOED OF CKEATION. 249 

the darkness that followed the evening until the next 
dawn, is the first day. With that dawn the second 
day begins. This mode of reckoning, unique in the 
Bible, and peculiar to this first chapter of Genesis, sug- 
gests that the days are peculiar too. To know the 
length of the first day, it would be necessary to know 
how long the night continued after its first appearance 
until the evening came, and then how long from even- 
ing until the first dawn. But this is not told us. The 
ordinance concerning the reckoning of time, " Let them 
be for signs, and lor seasons, and for days and for 
years," w^as not given until the fourth day, and could 
have no application until after the creation of Adam. 
IN'ot by the sun, then, were the days measured, but by 
light and darkness, which God called Day and Night, 
of the length of which we are not informed ; and, con- 
sequently, there is nothing in the text to compel us to 
restrict the days to the time of the earth's diurnal mo- 
tion. If the length of the days is to be measured by 
that of the seventh, the day of God's rest, those days 
must be indefinite periods, for the day of rest still 
continues. It is said, chap. ii. 2, "And he rested on 
the seventh day from all the work wdiich He had 
made," without any mention of evening and morning. 
The day of rest, therefore, still continues, and this is 
plainly expressed and argued in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, " Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being 
left us of entering into His rest, any of you should 
seem to come short of it," or, as some moderns trans- 
late, " Let us then be careful, lest as a promise to enter 
into His [God's] rest still remains, any of you appear 
remaining behind." On which words Stuart says, 
" In chapter iv. 1, he brings forward the assertion that 
the promise of entering into the rest of God still re- 
mains, addressed to the Hebrew Christians as it was 
to the Israelites of old. . . , But what is the rest in 
question? Is it quiet possession of the land of 
Canaan ? No, says the Apostle. Believers now en- 
ter into the rest (verse 3), i.e. (adds he) the same kind 
of rest as was anciently proffered. Moreover, God 
11* 



250 ^^^ TO FAITH. ^ [Essay V. 

calls it Kardirava-iv /ulov, My rest, i.e. (adds he) such 
rest as God enjoyed, after He completed the creation 
of the world, consequently sjDiritual, heavenly rest. 
This is plain (as he goes on in verse 4) from what the 
Scripture says, Gen. ii. 2, concerning the rest of God." 
According, then, to this declaration that God's rest or 
Sabbath still continues, the seventh day of creation is 
an indefinite period and the other days may be also. 
The six days are days of the Lord, God's days, as the 
first Sabbath was God's rest, and, therefore, as God 
rested on His seventh day, man is commanded to rest 
on his seventh day, and God blessed and sanctified it. 
13. But though the Mosaic language implies that the 
six days of which he speaks are six periods of time, it 
does not follow that they are to be identified with the 
six periods commonly received in geology. Indeed, to 
those who have no theory to establish, it is apparent 
that they do not agree, neither is it necessary that they 
should. That the Mosaic account, is not contradicted 
by modern discovery is quite suflicient. The impossi- 
bility of identifying these periods is evident from the 
fact that of the work of two days in the Mosaic ac- 
count geology knows nothing, and astronomy nothing 
certain ; namely, that of the first on which the light 
was called forth ; and of the fourth day, when the sun 
and the planetary system were perfected. Moses gives 
an outline of the history of creation, such as would be 
intelligible to those for whom he wrote, and suitable as 
an introduction to Divine revelation, and on both ac- 
counts necessarily limited in the matter and brief in 
the narration. He, therefore, notices only those things 
necessary to a true religious system, or perceptible by 
men. After the original creation of heaven and earth, 
and the condition of earth, he mentions the evocation 
of light and the creation of the ether, in which the 
heavenly bodies move, as efi'ected in the first two days. 
Whether anything else was created in those two days, 
he neither affirms nor denies. So far therefore as the 
Mosaic record is concerned, these two days may in- 
clude the whole of the primary, secondary, and tertiary 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CPwEATIOK 251 

formations, with all their products, their flora and their 
fauna. The products of those periods, buried in the 
earth, were, so far as w^e know, utterly unknown to the 
Israelites and their contemporaries, and to mankind 
for many ages after. Even to ourselves the knowledge 
is recent. For Moses to mention* them, w^as not only 
unnecessary, but would have been altogether out of 
place. Such details would have encumbered the out- 
line, and turned away the attention from God the 
Creator to things at that time invisible and unintelli- 
gible. The object of the Mosaic narrative is to explain 
the origin of the universe and of its parts, as they were 
known or visible to men of that day. So soon, there- 
fore, as he has mentioned the light and the ether, he 
advances at once to the preparation of the earth for 
man ; and thus the third day presents the dry land in 
its present state, with its flora difi'ering from the pre- 
ceding geological stages. Of this state of things, Page 
says : " At the close of the Pleistocene period the pres- 
ent distribution of sea and land seems to have been es- 
tablished ; the land presenting the same surface of 
configuration, and the sea the same coast line, with the 
exception of such modifications as have since been pro- 
duced by the atmospheric, aqueous, and other causes, 
described in chap. iii. At the close of that period, the 
earth also appears to have been peopled by its present 
flora and fauna, with the exception of some local re- 
movals of certain animals, and the general extinction 
of a few species." * According to the Mosaic account 
the growth of grass, herb and fruit trees, begun on the 
third day, must have gone on through the fourth. 
Then on the fifth day the marine, and on the sixth the 
land animals of the present period were called into ex- 
istence. The words of Moses, " Let the dry land ap- 
pear," are in exact accordance with what geology 
relates. The rise of the ocean had buried the tertiary 
world in its waters. " The disruption of the earth's 
crust, extending W. 16° S., and E. 16° K, through which 
the chain of the great Alps was forced up to its pres- 

* * Advanced Text-book,' p. 300. 



252 ^^^^ ^^ FAITH. [Essay V. 

ent elevation, which, according to M. d'Orbign^^, was 
simultaneous with that which forced up the Chilian 
Andes, a chain which extends over a length of 3000 
miles of the western continent, terminated the tertiary 
age, and preceded immediately the creation of the 
hmnan race and its concomitant tribes. The waters of 
the seas and oceans, lifted up from their beds by this 
immense perturbation, swept over the continents with 
irresistible force, destroying instantaneously the entire 
flora and fauna of the last tertiary period, and burying 
its ruins in the sedimentary deposits which ensued. . . . 
When the seas had settled into their new beds, and the 
outlines of the land were permanently defined, the 
latest and greatest act of creation was accomplished by 
clothing the earth with the vegetation which now 
covers it, peopling the land and the water with the 
animal tribes which now exist, and calling into being 
the human race. . . . The most conspicuous condition 
which distinguishes the present from all past periods is 
the existence of the human race among its fauna, the 
attributes of which are so peculiar as to place it out of 
all analogy with the other classes of animals. Another 
striking physical difference between the present and 
all former periods consists in the different divisions of 
the earth's surface into climatological zones, each zone 
having its peculiar fauna and flora. In all former ages 
and periods, including those which immediately pre- 
ceded the present, no traces of climatic difference have 
been found."* In all this there is nothing inconsistent 
with the Mosaic statement. There is one most striking 
and extraordinary coincidence : Moses represents the 
earth as existing for a long period before the sun be- 
came its source of light and heat. During that period 
there could have been no climatic difference, as this 
depends upon the position of the earth with reference 
to the sun. Now this exactly agrees with the conclu- 
sions of geology, which asserts, as we have seen, that 
before the human period there was no difference of 
climate, that the earth was not dependent on the sun 

* Lardner's * Popular Geology,' §§ 553, 555, 561. 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC KECOED OF CREATION. 253 

for its temperature, that there was apparently one uni- 
form high temperature over the whole earth, and con- 
sequently that the flora and fauna of warm climates are 
found, in the prehuman period, in latitudes where they 
could not now exist. Here then is an instance of the 
extraordinary scientific accuracy of the Mosaic ac- 
count. 

14. Another objection to Scriptural cosmogony is, 
that the Bible asserts that the earth is immovable. 
"The Hebrew records, the basis of religious truth, 
manifestly countenanced the opinion of the earth's iin- 
mobility." * The proofs of this proposition are not 
taken from Moses, who says nothing on the subject, but 
from such pages as Ps. xciii. 1, — "The world also is 
established that it cannot be moved ; " and Ps. civ. 5, 
— " Who laid tlie foundations of the earth, that it should 
not be moved forever." See also Ps. cxix. 90, 91. Ac- 
cording to this mode of interpretation, it can also be 
proved that the Hebrews also held that a pious man 
was an immovable fixture ; for it is said, Prov. x. 
30, "The righteous shall never be moved," the same 
word in Hebrew. But this objection rests on simple 
ignorance of the Hebrew word translated "moved." 
This word. Mot ('^'i^), signifies, as Gesenius says, " to 
waver, to shake, to totter," and, therefore, it is applied 
to the feet of one in motion in Ps. xvii. 5, — " Hold up 
my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not ; " or, 
as the margin has it, " be not moved." Can any one 
be found so silly as to suppose that David prayed that 
his feet might be immovably fixed ? The whole prayer 
implies motion, walking in the Lord's ways ; and the 
latter part of the petition is that his feet might not 
" totter," that he might not stumble. So far, therefore, 
are the above passages from declaring that the earth is 
immovable, that they necessarily imply its motion. 
"The world is established that it cannot totter," not 
even in that velocity of motion with which it compasses 
the sun. A totter, a slip, would be of dreadful conse- 

* ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 208. See also Hitchcock's ' Religion of Geol- 
ogy/ PP- 25 and 43. 



254 -^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay V. 

qiience to its inhabitants ; but the Lord has so arranged 
and steadied its motions, tliat no totter is possible. 
The ^Yonderful mode of its suspension in space, as well 
as that of the heavenly bodies, as necessarily implied in 
the Scriptnral doctrine of an ethereal expanse, is also 
beantifuUy expressed in Job xxvi. 7. " He stretcheth 
out the north over the empty place ; he hangeth the 
earth upon nothing." To infer that Scripture teaches 
the immobility of the earth because it speaks of sunrise 
and sunset, or because Joshua said, " Sun, stand thou 
still," is just as fair as to attribute the same error to the 
compilers of almanacks and astronomical tables, or to 
scientific men in their common jparlance. There are 
certain popular phrases which no universality of sci- 
ence will ever banish from general use. The great his- 
torian of the Inductive Sciences, like all other people 
of common sense, uses the popular language. " The mo- 
tions of the sun, the succession of the places of his ris- 
ing and setting at different times of the year, the great- 
est height which he reaches .... would all exhibit 
several cycles. . . . The turning hack of the sun, when 
he had reached his greatest distance to the south or the 
north, as shown either by his rising or his height at 
noon, w-ould perhaps be the most observable of such 
circumstances." "^ If Copernicus himself had been in 
a similar position with that of Joshua, he would have 
used just the same language. To the end of time the 
most scientific of men will continue to speak of sunrise 
and sunset — the sun passing the meridian, or sinking 
below the horizon ; and he who would try to substitute 
a more exact phraseology would be regarded as more 
of a pedant than a philosopher. 

15. Yerses 6-8. — The Mosaic firmament not a 
solid vault. — In close connection with this objection is 
that directed against the Mosaic account of " the fir- 
mament." It was already urged by Yoltaire, and in 
recent times oft triumphantly repeated, to show the 
supposed ignorance and gross conceptions of the He- 
brew people. Gesenius, Winer, Knobel, <fec., have 

* Vol. i. p. 127. 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CKEATION. 255 

patronized it ; their statements have been transferred 
wholesale into popular English works, and lately re- 
peated in "Essays and Reviews'' (pp. 219, 220) :— ^'The 
work of the second day of creation is to erect the vault 
of heaven (Heb., raMa / Gr. crTepecofia ; Lat., firnfiamen- 
tum), wdiich is represented as supporting an ocean of 
water above it. The waters are said to be divided, so 
that some are below, some above the vault. That the 
Hebrews understood the sky, firmament, or heaven, to 
be a permanent solid vault, as it appears to the ordi- 
nary observer, is evident enough from various expres- 
sions made use of concerning it. It is said to have 
pillars (Job xxvi. 11), foundations (2 Sam. xxii. 8), doors 
(Ps. Ixxviii. 23), and windows (Gen. vii. 11). No 
quibbling about the derivation of the word ralia, which 
is literally ' something beaten out,' can affect the ex- 
plicit description of the Mosaic writer, contained in the 
w^ords, 'The waters that are above the firmament,' or 
avail to show that he was aware that the sky is but 
transparent. 

" JVote. — The root is generally applied to express the 
hammering or beating out of metal plates ; hence some- 
thing beaten or spread out. It has been pretended 
that the word raMa may be translated expanse^ so. as 
merely to mean empty space. The context sufficiently 
rebuts this." 

This objection, if well founded, would be conclusive 
proof of the opposition betw^een astronomic science and 
the Mosaic cosmogony. But, happily, it is the weak- 
est of all the objections, and the most easily refuted by 
Scripture statement, and by the history of interpre- 
tation. "The Hebrews," says Mr. Goodwin, "imder- 
stood the sky, firmament, or heaven to be a permanent 
solid vault." Here are two assertions : Eirst, that the 
Hebrews understood the firmament or heaven to be a 
vault. Secondly, that they regarded that vault as 
solid. The first assertion, a repetition of Gesenins's 
hemisphoerii instar^ is totally without foundation. The 
word raMa signifies not vaults but, as all allow, an ex- 
panse^ sometMng sjyread out^ whether solid or unsolid. 



256 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 

and therefore incompatible with the idea of vault or 
arch. But the main part of the objection is that the 
firmament, or heavens, are solid or firm. 'Now, ac- 
cording to Scripture, the firmamejit, or heaven, is that 
space or place where birds. flj. They could not fly in 
a solid vault ; therefore the firmament cannot be a solid 
vault. This is proved by the following references. In 
Gen. i. 28, birds are called " the fowl of the heavens " 
(not " air," as the Authorized Yersion has -it) — a de- 
scription utterly inapplicable if the heavens be a per- 
manent solid vault, in which the heavenly bodies were 
fixed. " The fowl of the solid vault " would be non- 
sense. If the heavens be the expanse, beginning at 
the earth, extending to the stars, and including the air, 
the description is appropriate ; and so convinced were 
our translators that the heavens have this meaning, that 
they have here and elsewhere translated '' fowl of the 
air," not "fowl of the heavens." The reason why 
Moses calls birds fowls of the heavens is because they 
fly in the heavens, as we read, Deut. iv. 12, " any 
winged fowl that flieth in the heavens." And again, 
Prov. XXX. 19, "The way of an eagle in the heavens." 
And again, Jer. viii. 7, "The stork in the heavens 
knoweth his appointed time." In all these passages, 
" heavens " means the place wdiere birds fly.* In 
Psalm Ixxviii. 36, the word means the place where 
winds blow — " He causeth a wind to blow in the 
heavens ; " in both cases the region of the atmosphere. 
The Biblical writers must, therefore, have considered 
the heavens or firmament as something analogous to the 
air, an expanse, or ether, not a hard solid vault. 

The idea of expanse, independent, or even exclusive 
of solidity, is also to be inferred, from the manner in 
which other verbs f simply signifying to extend or 
spread out, are applied to the heavens : as, for instance, 
Isaiah xlviii. 13, "My right hand hath spread out (tip- 
pechah) the heavens." Isaiah xl. 22, " That stretcheth 

* These passages also give the true meaning of the words in Genesis i. 
30, where the Authorized Version has, " In the open firmament of heayen," 
literally, " upon the face of the firmament of heaven." 

t The verbs itas Natah, nn73 Mathach, and nSD Taphach. 



Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC KECOKD OF CEEATION. 257 

ont (noteli) the heavens like a curtain (literally, like 
fineness), and spreacleth them out [vaiyimtacli) as a 
tent to dwell in." The compal'ison to a tent does not 
suggest solidity — the comparison with a fine curtain 
excludes it. the Hebrew word (Dok) here used for 
curtain, is cognate with Dah^ "fine dust," and signifies, 
as Gesenius says, " Fineness — hence fine cloth^ a gar- 
ment, a curtain." The same idea of something unsolid, 
unpermanent, and movable, is conveyed in the similar 
figure, Ps. civ. 2, " Who stretchest out the heavens like 
a curtain [Yerihah]." The Hebrew word here used 
for curtain means "something tremulous," and, as 
Gesenius gives it, " a curtain^ hanging^ so called from 
its tremulous motion " — a simile most unsuitable for a 
solid vault, most appropriate for an ethereal expanse or 
fluid. 

But besides Rakia and Bliamaim^ there is another 
word, Shcchalcim^ said to be used sometimes for heav- 
ens, which also excludes the idea of solidity. Gesenius 
thus gives the meaning: "pnd. 1. Dust, fine dust. 
Isai. xl. 15 ; 2. A cloud, Arab, thin cloud, pp., as it 
would seem, cloud of dust, or the 'like. Mostly in plu- 
ral, clouds, Metonym. for \\iq fir mame^it, the heavens, 
the shy, i. q. tD'^^a^ and s.'::p^, comp. in English the clouds. 
Job xxxvii. 18, ' Hast thou like him spread out the shy 
(t=:^pn\:3), which is firm like a tnolten looking-glass f " 
A cloud of dust is nothing solid, and, therefore, when 
the word Shachah, signifying cloud of dust, is trans- 
ferred to the clouds of heaven, it implies that, in the 
mind of him that transferred it, the clouds of heaven 
are also devoid of solidity. But here it will be replied, 
In the passage of Job, just referred to by Gesenius, 
" the sky " is compared to a molten metallic mirror — 
it must, therefore, be firm, like a metal plate. ISTow, 
granting for a moment that "sky" is here a possible 
translation, the conclusion drawn does not follow. If 
the sky be solid and firm, and able to bear up a whole 
heavenly ocean of water, is it not rather a descent from 
the poetic, indeed a very considerable bathos, to com- 
pare its strength to that of a woman's metal mirror ? 



258 -^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay V. 

The beauty of the simile is lost. Lnther's poetic mind 
and shrewd common sense saw this, and, therefore, 
when there was no dispute about the matter, showed 
that here there is a contrast rather than a comparison. 
The expanse, he says, is rarer and liner than the atmos- 
phere in which we live, and yet, through the power of 
the Divine word, strong as if it were metal.* 

Take into account the exact meaning of ShecJiahim^ 
clouds^ or substances unsolid as a cloud of dust^ and the 
beauty and force of the figure come out still more 
strongly. When, therefore, it is remembered that " the 
Hebrews '' regarded the heavens or firmament as in- 
cluding the place where birds fly — that they liken it to 
fineness or fine cloth, that they regard it as tremulous, 
like a tremulous curtain, and thought that it was of the 
nature of the clouds, t^^'pnL^, and that the clouds were 
of the nature of a cloud of fine dust, and might be called 
by the same word, it will be seen that they did not con- 
sider the heavens as a solid vault, but as an ether sim- 
ilar to the atmosphere. 

That the word liaMa signifies expanse is also proved 
by Jewish tradition. It is that sense which appears 
when the Jews began to write lexicons and grammars, 
and is preserved to this day. David Ivimchi, in his 
Boolv of Boots ^ explains the v^ovdi BaJcah first by Paras, 
to spread out, and he is followed by both Spanish and 
German Jews, who translate RaMa expanse. 

The Jewish-Spanish version has "Espandidura; " 
the Jewish-German " Ausspreitung ; '' the Pentateuch 
by Zunz, Arnheim, and Sachs gives " Ausdehniing." 
The ' Jewish School and Family Bible,' by Dr. Benisch, 
has " expanse." At the revival of letters Christians 
learned Hebrew from the Jews, and received the old 
Jewish interpretation " expanse." So Yatablus and 
Peter Martyr have " Sit expansio in medio aquarum." 
Calvin has both extensio and expansio — '' Sit extensio in 
medio aquarum . . . . et fecit Deus expansionem ; " and 
so Sebastian Mnnster, Mercerus, the Geneva French 
Bible of 1588, Luke Osiander, 1597, -and Cypriano de 

* See the passage quoted below, p. 259. 



Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CFwEATION. 259 

Yalera, 1602, who has " Sea iin estendimiento en medio 
de his aguas." And Lnther, though he retained the 
word " Yeste," answering to '' firmament," explains it 
as a fine and subtile expanse. In his Commentary to 
verse 6, he says, " God takes this thick and shapeless 
kimp of vapour, nebel (nebula), created the first day out 

of nothing, and commands it to spread itself out 

for the word Uahia signifies among the Hebrews some- 
thing extended and spread out, and comes from Rak% 
to spread out .... when, therefore, Job says, xxxvii. 
18, 'The heavens are made firm as with iron,' he has 
respect not to the material, but to the Word, which can 
make the softest thing in nature into the strongest and 

the firmest for we know how subtile the air is in 

which we live. ... But the heaven is naturally still 
more subtile and thin." ^ Yatablus gives a similar ex- 
planation. Having remarked that heaven is by the 
Hebrews sometimes called Shamaim^ sometimes Ralda^ 
he says, " It is distinguished into two parts, the upper 
part, which is called ether, which is fire, and the lower 
part, which is called air." Calvin (m Z<9C.) gives a sim- 
ilar interpretation. " Moreover, the word Rcikia com- 
prehends not only ihoi whole region of the air, but what- 
ever is open above us, as the word heaven is sometimes 
understood by the Latins." Now, it is to be remarked 
that these interpretations were given when the old sys- 
tem of astronomy was still in fashion, and received by 
those who give these interpretations, as the Jewish 
Rabbis and the Eeformers. They cannot therefore be 
accused of quibbling, or of advocating a new interpre- 
tation to help them out of difficulties arising from the 
discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. This sense con- 
tinued to be received by Hebrew scholars until the in- 
fection of Deistic infidelity fully influenced the minds 
of men to make out a case of ignorance against Moses 
and the Hebrews. It is found in Mariana, 1624 ; Hot- 
tinger, 1659 ; Seb. Schmidt, 1697 ; Baumgarten and 
Eqm. Teller, 1749; J. C. F. Schultz, 1783; Dathius, 
1791 ; Ilgen, 1798. Even in the first edition of Gesen- 

* Luther's * Werke.' Walch. vol. i. 



260 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay V, 

ius's ' Lexicon,' 1810-13, though he says that the He- 
brews looked upon heaven as solid, he explains rakia, 
not as a solid expanse, but " Etwas ausgebreitetes." In 
later editions he wavers, sometimes inserting, sometimes 
omitting, the word " solid " or '' firm." ^ 

But, it may be asked, if such be the Jewish tradi- 
tion, how the LXX. and Yulgate came to render RaMa 
by o-repeoyfia, firmamentu'm. The answer is, that by 
crrepecoiJia the LXX. also understood a fine and subtile 
ether w^hicli held the heavenly bodies in their places.! 
Stereoma was chosen not to express something itself i 
solid, but something that strengthened or made firm 
the heavenly bodies. They took the word in the tran- 
sitive sense, like ^e^aicofia, S7]\cofia, ifKrjpwfia, &c. ; and 
this is proved by the Yulgate having firmamentum^ 
which form of word signifies something that makes 
firm, like ornamentum^ comjjjlementum^alimentiiin^ mon- 
timentum^ &c. In this sense stereoma is elsewhere 
used by the LXX., as Ezek. iv. 16 : "I will break the 
staft* of bread, arepecofia dprov ; " and Esther ix. 29 : 
"And the confirmation of the letter, to re crrepecofia rrj^; 
iTTLG-ToXrj^J^ And again Ps. xviii. 3 : " The Lord is my 
rock, cTTepicofjLa yLtoy," where the Yulgate has firmamen- 
tum meum. That Jerome took firmamentum in the 
same sense appears from his Commentary on Isa. xxvi. 
1, where for bn, htdwarJo, Symmachus has G-repicofia ; 
and Jerome remarks : " Pro eo quod nos vertimus ante- 
murale, Symmachus firmamentum interpretatus est." 
And again on Ezek. iv. 16, on the words " stafi*of bread : " 
" Yerbum Hebraicum3f(<xz^^<3A prima Aquilge editio hacu- 
lunfh^ secunda et Symmachus Tlieodotioque arepewfjia, id 

* In the < German Manual ' of 1823, in the verh '$\?^. we find—" (1) Stam- 

pfen mit den Fiissen. ... (2) Stampfen, breitschlagen, daher (3)Ausbreiten, 

aber nur von fasten Korpern. . . . Im Syr. befestigen, grimden." In the 
Latin edition of 1S33 it is not found. In Robinson's translation, the word 
"solid" is found in the substantive, but not in the verb. The reference to 

the Syriac shows that the idea " firm" is not included : Syr. ^^^.^ — firmavit, 

stabilivit, Aph. fundavit, pertundendo et constipando firmavit, ut facere 
Solent, qui fundamenta, sedium jaciunt." According to this, and Gesenias is 
right, the Syriac word does not mean to beat out or ram something that is 
solid or firm, but by ramming or beating to make firm that which was not 
firm before. 



EsbayV.] the mosaic eecord of ceeation. 261 

est firmameniwn interpretati sunt." The Septnagint 
adopted the word, as Le Clerchas shown in his Commen- 
tary, from the Oriental or Chaldaic philosophy : " Hinc 
coelos X^'S'^P^ IceMhin^ et nt loqnmitur Grseci eorum inter- 
pretes, (TT6peo)/j.a, qiiod inferiora comjprimerent slc^Jit- 
marent^ deosque prsesides nniiiscnj usque coeli ''Avo'xel^ 
et Xvvox^'i'^y sustentatores et coactores appellabant." He 
refers in proof to a passage in Thomas Stanley's 'His- 
tory of Philosophy,' in wdiich, though that writer calls 
stereoma a solid orb, yet he shows that this stereoma 
was of a nature of an ethereal fluid : * " The first of the 
corporeal worlds is the empyreal (by Empyrseum the 
Chaldseans understood not, as the Christian theologists, 
the seat of God and the blessed spirits, which is rather 
analogous to the supreme light of the Chaldseans, but 
the outward sphere of the corporeal world). It is round 
in figure, according to the oracle, ' enclosing heaven in 
a round figure.' It is also a solid orb, or firmament ; 
for the same oracles call it a-repecofia. It consists of 
fire, w^hence named the Empyreal, or as the oracles, 
tlie fiery worlds which fire, being immediately next the 
incorporeal supramundane light, is the rarest and sub- 
tilest of bodies, and, by reason of this subtilty, pen- 
etrates into the 8sther, which is the next w^orld below 
it, and, by mediation of the sether, through all the ma- 
terial world, 

" Chap. xiv. — The ssther is a fire (as its name im- 
plies) less subtile than the empyrseum ; for the empy- 
rseum penetrates through the sether ; j^et is the aether 
itself so subtile that it penetrates through the material 
world. The second sethereal world is the sphere of 
fixed stars. . . . The third sethereal w^orld is that of the 
planetary orb, which contaius the sun, moon, and 
planets." 

According, then, to this meaning of stereoma the 
word gives no countenance to the idea that the firma- 
ment is a solid vault, capable of sustaining an ocean of 
water above it. On the contrary, it conveys the idea 

* * History of Philosophy,' by Thomas Stanley. Chaldaick Philosophy, 
chap. xiii. 



2(32 ^^^^ "^0 FAITH. [EssatV. 

of a fine, subtile fluid pervading space, and agrees, 
therefore, with the Biblical usage, which makes it an 
expanse extending from the earth to the heavenly 
bodies, including the airy space in wliich birds fly. 

Having thus shown, from the usage of the Biblical 
writers, the uniformity of the Jewish tradition and the 
LXX., that the meaning of Rakia is an expanse, not a 
solid vault, the flction of " an ocean of water above it" 
falls of itself. That rests upon the supposition of a 
" permanent solid vault," and is altogether incompatible 
with the true meaning of an ethereal expanse. But in- 
dependently of this incompatibility, the theory of " an 
ocean" above the firmament is a mere fiction. There is 
not one word about it in the Bible. The sacred text 
says that the firmament was to separate the waters which 
were imder the firmament from the waters which were 
above the firmament. It also relates the gathering to- 
gether of the waters under the firmament and the for- 
mation of the ocean, but it says not one word about the 
gathering together of the waters above the firmament 
into an ocean or reservoir; that is pure invention of 
those who wish to burden upon " the Hebrews" what 
they are entirely innocent of. Indeed it is admitted by 
Gesenius and others, though not noticed by the Essay- 
ist, that the Hebrews knew better, and were acquainted 
with the true origin of rain. Gesenius says that the 
Hebrew poets describe a firmament, " Super quo ocea- 
nus ccelestis existat, apertis firmamenti cancellis pluvi- 
am demittens in terram (Gen. i. 7, vii. 11 ; Ps. civ. 3 ; 
cxlviii. 4) vulgarem nimirum intuitionem secuti, licet 
vera reram ratio iis minime incognita sit." (Yide Gen. 
ii. 6 ; Job xxxvi. 27, 28.) He does not ascribe the fic- 
tion of ah ocean to the Hebrews generally, but onl}^ to 
the poets following popular notions. It is therefore un- 
fair to charge it upon '' a Hebrew Descartes," who must 
have been up to the science of the day. 

But it is said that the Hebrews believed that heaven 
had pillars and foundations, that there were windows 
and doors in heaven, on the opening of which the rain 
descended. With equal reason might these wise inter- 



Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CEEATION. '263 

preters say that the Hebrews believed that there were 
bottles m heaven, and that the celestial ocean, or part 
of it, was first bottled off before the earth could be sup- 
plied with rain, or that " the waters ai*e bound up in a 
garment" (Frov. xxx. 4), or that tlie ocean has bars and 
doors (Job xxxviii. 10, 17), or that the shadow of death 
and the womb have doors (Job iii. 10), for all these are 
spoken of. If these are figurative, so are the windows 
and doors of heaven. As in Job xxxviii. 37, "Who 
can number the clouds in wisdom ? or who can stay the 
bottles of heaven?" bottles are parallel to and explained 
by "clouds;" so in Ps. Ixxviii. 23, there is a similar 
explanatory parallelism — " Though He had commanded 
the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heav- 
en ; " and few children in a Sunday or ISTational school 
would take bottles or doors literally. The common 
people are not so dull as Gesenius and some other intel- 
lectual wonders of the day think. Who ever met a 
rustic, accustomed to look at the heavens, who thought 
it was a solid vault, and that the stars were fixed in 
like nails ? The common people are not so silly ; they 
judge by what they see. They do not see a solid vault, 
but they see the lark and the eagle soaring aloft in the 
air, and they think that all beyond is just alike. They 
never dream of a solid obstacle in the way. That solid 
vault savours much more of the fancy of the poet add- 
ing a trait of grandeur to a description, or of the school 
of the philosopher inventing a theory to account for the 
motions of the heavenly bodies, than of the practical 
common sense of the common people. The most uned- 
ucated know very well the connexion between clouds 
and rain, and in this the Hebrews were not behind other 
people. The two passages pointed out by Gesenius — 
Gen. ii. 6, and Job. xxxvi. 27, 28 — prove that the He- 
brews knew the connexion between evaporation and 
rain, especially the latter. " For he maketh small the 
drops of water; they pour down rain according to the 
vapour thereof, which the clouds do drop and distil 
upon man abundantly." The Hebrew language has va- 
rious words for " cloud " or " clouds " ; they are all 



264 ^I^S '^^ FAITH. [Essay V. 

found in connexion with rain. Thus, Gen. ix. : " When 
I bring a clond, "js:?, over tlie earth, my bow shall be 
seen in the cloud." Tiie clouds might excite apprehen- 
sion of another deluge ; the bow dispels it. Deborah 
was able to tell how, when the Lord went out of Seir, 
" the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped (dis- 
tilled) ; the clouds, t^n:?, also dropped water." (Judges 
V. 4.) In 1 Kings xviii. 44, 45, the little cloud, ss, rising 
from the sea, was recognized by Elijah as a sign of com- 
ing rain ; and when the heavens were black with clouds 
and wind, " a great rain" followed. Solomon says 
(Prov. iii. 20), " By his knowledge the depths are bro- 
ken up, and the clouds, D^pniij, drop down dew," which 
reads very like a commentary upon Gen. vii. 11, "the 
fountains of the great deep w^ere broken up, and the 
windows of heaven were opened." These ai-e only a 
few specimens of the many passages that bear upon the 
subject; but sufficient to show that "the Hebrews" 
knew very well that rain did not come from a celestial 
ocean, through windows and doors, nor yet from bottles 
in the heavens, but from the clouds. Indeed, the con- 
nexion between the two furnished materials for the 
proverb, " Clouds, t^si"'Tr3, and wind, and no rain ; such 
is the man whose promise of a gift is a lie." (Prov. 
XXV. 14.) 

But though there be no ocean above the firmament, 
may there not have been, may there not still be, waters 
above the firmament? Such was the opinion of the 
learned F. Yon Meyer, adopted by Kurtz in his first 
edition of ^ Bible and Astronomy,' and lately advo- 
cated by Delitsch. That such a supposition is not un- 
scientific, appears from Dr. Whewell's ' Theory of the 
Solar System': — "The planets exterior to Mars, Ju- 
piter and Saturn especially, as the best known of them, 
appear, by the best judgment which we can form, to be 
spheres of water and of aqueous vapour, combined, it 
may be, with atmospheric air . . . Can we see any 
physical reason for the fact , which appears to us prob- 
able, that all the water and vapour of the system is 
gathered in its outward parts ? It would seem that we 



Essay V.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 265 

can. Water and aqueous vapour are driven oif and 
retained at a distance by any other source of lieat. . . . 
It was, then, agreeable to the general scheme, that the 
excess of water and vapour should be packed into ro- 
tating masses, such as are Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus 
and Neptune. . . . And thus the vapour, which would 
otherwise have wandered loose about the atmosphere, 
was neatly wound into balls, which again were kept in 
their due place by being made to revolve in nearly cir- 
cular orbits about the sun." Perhaps, when science 
knows a little more about the ethereal medium which 
fills space, and in which the heavenly bodies move, it 
may also learn something more about *' this water and 
aqueous vapour," and be better able to understand the 
Mosaic statement about the waters above the firma- 
ment. But, however that be. Biblical usage, Jewish 
tradition, the reason that moved the LXX. to adopt 
stereoma^ and the Yulgate firmamentum^ the current 
of Protestant interpretation until a recent date, concur 
in proving that "the Hebrews" did not believe in a 
solid heaven, like the brass or iron heaven of the hea- 
thens, but in an expanse of something like the atmos- 
pheric air.* This is not contrary, but rather agreeable 
to the discoveries of modern science, which attributes 
the retardation of the heavenly bodies to some resisting 
medium, and light to the undulations of some subtile 
fluid. 

16. Verse 27. Creation of one human pair, — This 
subject has been so fully discussed by Prichard that it 
is not necessary to enter upon it here.f It may be 

* The threat, Levit. xxvi. 19, " I will make your heayen like the iron, and 
your earth like the brass," also shows that the Hebrews as little looked upon 
the heavens as hard and solid, as they believed the earth to be brass, 

t Prichard sums up his argument thus : — " On the whole it appears that 
the information deduced from this fourth method of inquiry is as satisfactory 
as we could expect, and is sufficient to confirm, and indeed by itself to 
establish, the inference that the human kind contains but one species, and 
therefore, by a second inference, but one race. It will, I apprehend, be al- 
lowed by those who have attentively followed this investigation of particulars, 
that the diversities in physical character belonging to different races present 
no material obstacle to the opinion that all nations sprang from one original, 
a result which plainly follows from the foregoing consideration." (' Re- 
searches into the Physical History of Mankind/ by James Cowles Prichard, 
M.D., vol. ii. p. 589.) 
12 



266 ^^^ TO FAITH. [EsbayV. 

well, however, to notice a statement in ' Essays and 
Beviews' which says that the original formation of only 
one pair of human beings is taught only in the second 
chapter, and not in the first. ^' Man is said to have 
been created male and female, and the narrative con- 
tains nothing to show that a single pair only is in- 
tended." * ''It is in the second narrative of creation 
that the formation of a single man out of the dust of 
the earth is described, and the omission to create a fe- 
male at the same time is stated to have been repaired 
by the subsequent formation of one from the side of 
the man. " — 'Note in ' Essays and Eeviews,' p. 222. 
But the text in Gen. i., if carefully examined, proves 
that only one pair of human beings is intended, and 
that the formation of the two was not simultaneous. 
In verse 26 we read, " And God said. Let us make man 
(Adam without article) in our image, after our like- 
ness, and let them have dominion," etc. Here the lan- 
guage is indefinite. It refers to the whole human race. 
But then follows, "And God created the man (Adam, 
with the article) in his image, in the image of God 
created He him : male and female created He them." 
Here the language is definite, " the man," and in the 
first half of the verse- the pronoun is in the singular 
number, and the masculine gender, " In the image of 
God created He him." If the author had intended 
briefly to have stated that at first only one human be- 
ing, and that one the male, was created, what other 
language could he have employed? Then, having 
spoken in the singular number, and the masculine gen- 
der, he as briefiy but clearly describes the subsequent 
distinction into sexes. '' Male and female created He 
them." The plan of this chapter forbade his entering 
into the detail of the creation of woman, just as much 
as it hindered him from describing the varieties of 
herbs or trees, or fowls or fishes, or of beasts of the 
earth and cattle. As he merely says that God created 
them, so here, after the mention of " the man, " he 
just notices the fact that God created them male and 

* Cf. * Essays and Reviews.' 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 267 

female ; but in that very notice he implies that there is 
something peculiar, for with regard to fish or beasts or 
cattle he does not mention that God Created them male 
and female, or, as it may be rendered, " a male and a 
female." With regard to man, short as is the notice, 
he does relate, first, that " in the image of God created 
He him," that is, one male ; and then *' male and fe- 
male created He them." Even according to the opin- 
ion of those who make the first and second chapters 
of Genesis two accounts, written by two authors, the 
fifth chapter was written by the author who w^rote 
the first chapter (the Elohist, as they say). But in the 
fifth chapter the creation of one pair only is plainly 
implied. " This is the book of the generations of Adam. 
In the day that God created Adam, in the likeness of 
God created He him ; male and female created He 
them ; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, 
in the day when they were created. And Adam lived 
an hundred and thirty years," etc. In all this Adam 
is one person, and yet the first and second verses are a 
recapitulation of chapter i. 26, 27, in the very words 
of those verses. Therefore in i. 27, the author took 
Adam as one individual male human being, as Knobel 
fairly admits in his commentary on chap. v. 1-5 : — 

" Adam is here a proper name, as iii. 17 The 

author designedly repeats the statements of i. 27, 28, as 
his purpose is here to narrate how the first human pair 
propagated the species by generation, and brought forth 
children of the same form which they themselves had 

received at the creation from God The passage 

teaches that the Elohist, who here attributes to his 
Adam the begetting of a son in his 130th year, also 
believed in one first human pair, though in i. 26 he had 
not plainly said so." 

On this point, therefore, there is no discrepancy 
between the first and second chapters. The first chap- 
ter, as is proved by v. 26, 27, relates, first, the creation 
of Adam, and then mentions the distinction of male and 
female. The second chapter gives the particulars, first, 
of the creation of Adam, then of the creation of Eve. 



268 -^I^S TO FAITH. [EssatV. 

17. Thus a comparison of the actual statements of 
Moses with the discoveries and conclusions of modern 
science is so far from shaking, that it confirms our faith 
in the accuracy of the sacred narrative. "We are as- 
tonished to see how the Hebrew Prophet, in his brief 
and rapid outline sketched 3000 years ago, has antici- 
pated some of the most wonderful of recent discoveries, 
and can ascribe the accuracy of his statements and lan- 
guage to nothing but inspiration. Moses relates how 
God created the heavens and the earth at an indefinitely 
remote period before the earth was the habitation of 
man — geology has lately discovered the existence of a 
long prehuman period. A comparison with other scrip- 
tures shows that the " heavens " of Moses include the 
abode of angels, and the place of the fixed stars, which 
existed before the earth. Astronomy points out remote 
worlds, whose light began its journey long before the 
existence of man. Moses declares that the earth was 
or became covered with water, and w^as desolate and 
empty. Geology has found by investigation that the 
primitive globe was covered with an uniform ocean, 
and that there was a long azoic period, during which 
neither plant nor animal could live. Moses states that 
there was a time w^hen the earth was not dependent 
upon the sun for light or heat, when, therefore, there could 
be no climatic differences. Geology has lately verified 
this statement by finding tropical plants and animals 
scattered over all parts of the earth. Moses afiirms 
that the sun, as well as the moon, is only a light-holder. 
Astronomy declares that the sun itself is a non-luminous 
body, dependent for its light on a luminous atmosphere. 
Moses asserts that the earth existed before the sun was 
given as a luminary. Modern science proposes a theory 
which explains how this was possible. Moses asserts 
that there is an expanse extending from earth to dis- 
tant heights, in which the heavenly bodies are placed. 
Kecent discoveries lead to the supposition of some sub- 
tile fluid medium in which they move. Moses de- 
scribes the process of creation as gradual, and mentions 
the order in which living things appeared, plants, fishes, 



Essay v.] THE MOSAIC KECOED OF CREATION. 269 

fowls, land-animals, man. By the study of natm^e geol- 
ogy lias arrived independently at the same conclusion. 
Where did Moses get all this knowledge ? How was it 
that he w^orded his rapid sketch with such scientific 
accuracy ? If he in his day possessed the knowledge 
which genius and science have attained only recently, 
that knowledge is superhuman. If he did not possess 
the knowledge, then his pen must have been guided by 
superhuman wn'sdom. Faith has, therefore, nothing to 
fear from science. So far the records of nature, fairly 
"studied and rightly interpreted, have proved the most 
valuable and satisfying of all commentaries upon the 
statements of Scripture. The ages required for geo- 
logical development, the infinity of worlds and the im- 
mensity of space revealed by astronomy, illustrate, as 
no other note or comment has ever done, the Scripture 
doctrines of the eternity, the omnipo.tence, the wisdom 
of the Creator. Let then Science pursue her boundless 
course, and multiply her discoveries in the heavens 
and in the earth. The believer is persuaded that they 
will only show more clearly that " the w^ords of the 
Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of 
fire, purified seven times." Let Criticism also continue 
her profoundly interesting and important w^ork. Let 
her explore, sift, analyse, scrutinize, with all her pow- 
ers, the documents, language, and contents of Scripture, 
and honestly tell us the results. Since the day when 
Laurentius Yalla exposed the fiction of the Imperial 
donation, she has contributed much to the removal of 
error, and the advancement of literary, patristic, and 
historic truth ; and Divine revelation has also been 
illustrated by her labours. It might be shown that 
even the hostile and sceptical have involuntarily helped 
in the confirmation of the Christian verity, and that 
even their labours cannot be neglected without loss. 
But the student must carefully distinguish between the 
speculations of individuals and the ascertained, settled 
results of criticism. The theory of any one individual, 
however learned, laborious, and genial, is only an opin- 
ion, perhaps only one of a chaos of conflicting opinions. 



270 ^^^S T^ FAITH. [EbsayV. 

where sound criticism has found no sure footing. The 
settled results are those which, after severe testing, have 
been unanimously accepted bj the competent, the 
sober, and the judicious. The former may be popular 
for -a while, and seem to shake the faith ; but they are 
gradually overthrown by the progress of critical in- 
vestigation, and take their place in the record of things 
that were. The history of the last hundred years, since 
modern criticism took its rise, is sufficient to quiet the 
believer's mind as to the ultimate result. It tells of 
theory after theory, propounded by the critics of the 
day, first applauded, then controverted, then rejected, 
just like the philosophic systems of the same period, 
and yet a gradual advance from anti- Christian hostility 
to an efi'ort after scientific impartiality, and a large 
amount of positive gain for the right interpretation of 
Scripture and the confirmation of the old Christian 
belief. Faith, therefore, feels no more fear of Criticism 
than of Science, being assured that neither can *' do 
anything against the truth, but for the truth." 



ESSAY VI. 

ON THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE 
PENTATEUCH. 



CONTENTS OF ESSAY YI. 



1. Historic character of Christianity- 

attacks upon it — grounds of the at- 
tacks lie in speculation rather than 
in discovery. 

2. The Pentateuch especially assailed — 

object of the paper, to 'defend (a) 
the genuineness of the Pentateuch, 
an (b) its authenticity. 

3. First argument in favour of the gen- 

uineness, the fact that the work has 
come to us under the name of Mo- 
ses. 

4. Second argument, from the archaic 

character of the narrative and of the 
language. 

5. Third argument, from the intimate 

acquaintance with Egypt shown by 
the author. 

6. Fourth argument, from the knowl- 

edge which he displays of the Sina- 
itic peninsula and of the old races 
inhabiting Canaan. 

7. Fifth argument, from the fact that 

the Pentateuch professes to be the 
work of Moses — the fact admitted 
by Eationahsts. 

8. Sixth argument, from the uniform 

and consistent witness of the ear- 
liest Jewish writers. 

9. Seventh argument, from the testi- 

mony of the Heathen. 

10. Objection of DeWette, from the liter- 

ary perfection of the work, answer- 
ed" — Perfection not so great as sup- 
posed — Actual literary merit not 
very surprising. 

11. Objection from particular passages, 

said to imply a later date— First'an- 
swer. 

12. Second answer. 

13. Objection from the supposed intro- 

duction of the Levitical system at a 
time long subsequent to Moses — 
Grounds of the objection disproved. 



14. Mosaic authorship not having been 

disproved, no need to examine the 
other theories of the authorship — 
number of such theories very gi-eat. 

15. Importance of provmg the genuine- 

ness. 

16. Explanation of the exact sense in 

which it is maintained that Moses 
was the author of the Pentateuch. 

17. Authenticity of the Pentateuch as- 

sailed on six principal points. — I. 
The Chronologj--, which is regarded 
as too narrow-^(a) on account of 
the supposed early foundation of a 
monarchy in Egypt — (6) on account 
of the time requisite for the forma- 
tion of language. Examination of 
these two arguments. — II. The Flood 
thought to have been partial, from 
the absence of a universal tradition 
of it— The tradition proved to be, in 
e one sense, universal. — III. The Eth- 
nology of Gen. X. regarded as incor- 
rect-^Proofs of its correctness on 
the points to which exception has 
been taken. — lY. The early chapters 
of Genesis regarded as mythic — (a) 
on account of the resemblance of 
the two genealogies of the Cain- 
ites and the Sethites — (&) on ac- 
count of the sienificance of the names 
employed— (c) on account of the fact 
that the early history of other 
nations uniformly runs up into 
myth — Examination of these argu- 
ments. — V. The longevity of the 
Patriarchs considered to be impos- 
sible — Possibility not denied by 
phvsiolosT— Fact of longevity strong- 
ly 'attested by history.— YI. The 
time assigned to the sojourn in 
Egypt supposed to be incorrect— (a) 
as being insufficient for the immense 
increase in the numbers of the Isra- 
elites — (b) as being exactly double 
of the preceding period — Examina- 
tion of these arguments. 
13. Summary. 



ON THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHEN- 
TICITY OE THE PENTATEUCH. 



* AoK€t odv Tr\e7op fj rh T^fxicrv rod iravrhs elvai rj apxh'^ — Aristotle. 

1. Christianity is an historic religion. It claims 
to be a reasonable belief; but it does not base itself 
npon Reason. Its foundation is laid on the rock of 
Fact. God's actual dealings with the world from its 
creation to the full establishment of the Christian 
Church constitute its subject matter, and form the 
ground out of which its doctrines spring. The mystic 
spirit, which, despising the grossness and materiality 
of facts, seeks to form to itself a sublimated and ideal- 
ized religion in which events and occurrences shall 
have no place, leaves the fixed and stable land to float 
off upon an interminable ocean of shifting and chang- 
ing fancies, substituting in reality for the truth of God 
the mere thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the indi- 
vidual. If we are to maintain a Faith w^orthy of the 
name, we must plant our feet firmly on the solid ground 
of historic fact, and not allow ourselves to be shaken 
from that ground by unproved assertions, however 
boldly made, or however often repeated. We must 
give little heed to doubts, which may readily be started 
in connexion with any narrative, and demand of those 
who attack our belief, not mere ingenious speculations 
as to the past, but proof that the authoritative account, 
which has come down to us as part and parcel of our 
religion, and which even they profess after a certain 
sort to venerate, is devoid of literal truth, before we 
follow them in their endeavours to extract from the 
record some other sort of truth — not "rigidly historic"* 

* Bunsen, 'Egypt's Place in Universal History,' vol. iv. p. 383. 
12* 



274 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 

— ^but ideal, poetic, symbolical. We need not, we must 
not, shut our eyes to any new discoveries, be tliey sci- 
entific or historical ; but we are bound to examine the 
so-called discoveries narrowly, to see exactly to what 
they amount, and then to ask ourselves, " Do they pos- 
itively conflict with the plain historic sense of Scrip- 
ture or no ? " If they do, it will become a question 
(when the presumed discovery is historical) of relative 
credibility. The witnesses contradict one another — 
which of them shall we believe ? But more often it 
will be found that there is no such contradiction — that 
all which the discoveries have established^ is compati- 
ble with the Scriptural narrative, and that the contra- 
diction arises only where the conjectures and hypothe- 
ses of speculative minds have been superadded to the 
facts with which they profess to deal. Where this is 
the case, there need be no hesitation. " Yea, let God 
be true, and every man a liar ! " Human speculations 
and conjectures, once seen to be such, cannot trouble 
the faith of a Christian man. Facts are stubborn things, 
and rightly command our respect ; hypotheses are airy 
nothings, and may safely be disregarded and despised. 

2. Among the numerous attempts made to disturb 
men's faith in the present day, few have seemed more 
plausible, or have met with a greater amount of success, 
than those which have grouped themselves about the 
Pentateuch, the foundation stone on which the rest of 
the Bible is built. T]ie genuineness of the work, though 
it has not lacked defenders,* has been pertinaciously 
denied, both in Germany and in America ; while the 
authenticity of the narrative has been assailed in vari- 
ous respects. It will be the aim and object of the pres- 
ent paper to show, first, that there is no sufficient reason 
to doubt the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and, 
secondly, that there are no sufficient historical grounds 
for questioning the authenticity of the narrative. 

3. It is a general rule of literary criticism that, ex- 

* See especially the work of Jahn, * Aechtheit des Pentateuchs,' and Ha 
vernick's more recent ' EinleituDg,' which has been translated for Clarke's 
* Theological Library.' 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 275 

cept for special reasons, books are to he assigned to the 
authors whose names they bear. In profane literature 
this rule is considered sufficient to determine the au- 
thorship of ninety-nine ont of every hundred volumes 
in our libraries. Most men, who write works of any 
importance, claim them during their lifetime ; their 
claim, if undisputed, is accepted by the world at large ; 
and nothing is more difficult than to change the belief, 
which is thus engendered, subsequently. Every work 
therefore which comes down to us as the production of 
a particular author is to be accepted as his production, 
unless strong grounds can be produced to the contrary. 
The onus probandi lies with the person who denies the 
genuineness ; and, unless the arguments adduced in 
proof are very weighty, the fact of reputed authorship 
ought to overpower them. Sound criticism has gener- 
ally acquiesced in this canon. It raises an important 
presumption in favour of the Mosaic authorship of the 
tentateuch, anterior to any proof of the fact to be de- 
rived from internal evidence, or from the testimony of 
those who had special opportunities of knowing. 

4. The internal evidence in favour of the Mosaic 
authorship is, briefly, the following : — The book is ex- 
actly such a one as a writer of the age, character, and 
circumstances of Moses might be expected to produce. 
Its style is archaic. The reader, even of the English 
version, feels that he is here brought into contact with 
a greater simplicity, a more primitive cast of thought 
and speech, than he meets with in any of the other 
sacred writings. The life described, the ideas, the char- 
acters, have about them the genuine air of primitive 
antiquity. The student of the original observes that 
the very words themselves, the constructions, the gram- 
matical forms, bear similar traces of a remote author- 
ship, being often such as had become obsolete even 
before the composition of the Book of Joshua.* It is 
impossible to exhibit this argument popularly in the 

* See Jahn in Bengel's ' Archiv,' vol. ii., pp. 578 et seqq. ; and Fritzsche, 
* Aechtheit der Bticher Mosis,' pp. 174 et seqq. Compare also Marsh's * Au- 
thenticity of the Five Books of Moses,' pp. 6 et seqq 



276 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 

present condition of Hebrew scholarship among ns. 
Its weight, however, is sufficiently shown by the pres- 
sure which it has exerted upon the controversy in Ger- 
many, where the opponents of the Mosaic authorship 
are constrained to allow that a considerable number of 
"• archaisms " do in fact exist in the Pentateuch, and to 
account for them by the supposition that genuine Mo- 
saic documents were in the hands of its " compiler," 
from which he adopted the forms and words in ques- 
tion ! * This is surely about as i^robable as that a mod- 
ern French author, who made use of Froissart among 
his materials, should adopt his spelling, and form his 
sentences after his tj^e. 

5. Again, the writer shows a close acquaintance 
with Egypt, its general aspect, its history, geography, 
manners, customs, productions, and language, which 
would be natural to one so circumstanced as Moses, 
but which cannot be shown to belong naturally, or even 
probably, to any later Israelite, down to the time of 
Jeremiah. No doubt there was extensive commercial 
and political intercourse between Egypt and Judea in 
the age of Solomon, and in the later period of the Jew- 
ish kingdom ; but such intercourse, even if direct (of 
which we have no proof), would fail to give that exact 
historic knowledge of what would then have become a 
remote era, which the writer of the Pentateuch displays 
at every turn in the most easy and natural manner pos- 
sible. Laborious attempts have been made to invali- 
date this argument ; and one writerf has gone so far as 
to assert that in many respects the author of the Pen- 
tateuch shows a want of acquaintance with the customs 
of Egypt, such as is sufficient to prove that he was not 
Moses. But this audacity has had the happy effect of 
calling forth a reply, which has established beyond all 
possibility of refutation the exactitude and vast extent 
of the author's Egyptian knowledge, which is now 
allowed on all hands. The work of Hengstenberg, 
" Aegypten und Mose," must be carefully read for the 

* De Wette, ' Einleitung, in d. alt. Test.,' § 163. + Von Bohlen. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 277 

fnll weight of this reasoning to be appreciated.* Its 
argument does not admit of compression, since it de- 
pends mainl)^ on the multiplicity and minuteness of its 
detail ; but the impression which it leaves may be stated, 
briefly, as follows :- — That either a person born and bred 
in Egypt about the time of the Exodus wrote the Pen- 
tateuch, or that a writer of a later age elaborately stud- 
ied the history and antiquities of the Egyptians for the 
purpose of imposing a forgery on his countrymen, and 
that he did this with such skill and success that not 
even modern criticism, with its lynx-eyed perspicacity, 
and immense knowledge of the past, can detect and 
expose the fraud or point out a single place in which 
the forger stumbled through ignorance. 

6. To this it must be added, that the writer, who is 
thus intimately acquainted with the land and people 
of Egypt, is also fully aware of all the peculiar features 
of the Sinaitic peninsula ; f and further (and more 
especially) that he has a knowledge of the ancient con- 
dition and primitive races of Canaan, which must have 
been quite beyond the reach of any one who lived 
much later than Moses. The Rephaim, Zuzim, Emira, 
Horim, Avim, and Anakim, who appear as powerful 
races in the Pentateuch, have either perished or been 
reduced to insignificance by the time of the Judges. 
The writer of the Pentateuch, however, knows their 
several countries, their designations in the mouths of 
different nations, their cities, and the peoples by whom 
they were severally conquered. :j; Similarly, he ac- 
quaints us with the ancient names of a number of 
Canaanitish towns, which had been superseded by fresh 
titles long before the Exodus.§ All this is natural 
enough, supposing that the work was composed by 

* This work has been translated into English by Mr. R. D. C. Bobbins, of 
the Theological Seminary, Andover, United States; and a reprint of this 
translation, with additional notes, formed the third volume of Clarke's * Bib- 
lical Cabinet,' New Series (Edinburgh, 1845.) 

t Stanley, ' Sinai and Palestine,' pp. 20-24. 

X Gen. xiv. 5, 6 ; Num. xiii. 28 ; Deut. ii. 10-23. 

§ As Mamre, which became first Kirjath-arba (Josh. xiv. 15), and then 
Hebron ; Bela, which became Zoar (Gen. xiv. 2) ; Enmishpat, which became 
Kadesh (ib. ver. 7) ; Hazezon-Tamar, which became Engedi (ib. ; compare 
2 Chron. xx. 2) ; and Galeed, which became Mizpah (Gen. xxxi, 48, 49). 



278 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay YI. 

Moses ; but it would be very forced and artificial in a 
writer of a later age, even if we could suppose such a 
writer to have any means of acquiring the information. 
7. Further, the Pentateuch professes to be the work 
of Moses. Few books comparatively tell us by whom 
they are written. Neither Joshua, nor Judges, nor 
Kuth, nor the Books of Samuel, nor Kings, nor Chron- 
icles, nor Esther, nor the first three Gospels, nor the 
Acts, nor the ' Commentaries ' of Caesar, nor the ' An- 
nals,' or ' Histories,' of Tacitus, nor the ' Hellenics ' of 
Xenophon, nor Plato's ' Dialogues,' nor Aristotle's 
* Philosophical Works,' nor Plutarch's ' Lives,' nor at 
least nine-tenths of the other remains of ancient litera- 
ture, contain within them any statements showing by 
whom they were written. Authorship generally is 
mere matter of notoriety ; and usually the best evi- 
dence we have for it, beyond common repute, is the 
declaration of some writer, later by two or three cen- 
turies, that the person to whom a given work is as- 
signed, composed a book answering in it^ subject and 
its general character to the work which we find passing 
under his name. But occasionally we have evidence 
of a higher order. Some writers formally name them- 
selves as the authors of their works at the beginning, 
or at the close, or in the course of their narrative."'^ 
Others, without a distinct formal announcement, let us 
see, by the mode or matter of their narration, who the 
author is, using the first person, or mentioning facts of 
which they only could be cognisant, or otherwise im- 
plying, without directly asserting, their authorship. 
This last is the case of the Pentateuch. The author 
does not formally announce himself, but by the manner 
in which he writes, implies that he is Moses. This is 
so clear and palpable, that even the antagonists of the 
genuineness are forced to allow it.f " The author of 
the last four books," says one, " wishes to be taken for 
Moses." " The writer of Deuteronomy," says another, 

* As Herodotus, Thucvdides, Isaiah, St. Paul, Jesus the son of Sirach, &c. 

t De Wette, ' Einleitung in d. alt. Test.,' §. 162, d. ; Hartmann, ' For- 
schungen iiber d. Pentateuch,' p. 538; Von Bohlen, *Die Genesis hist. krit. 
erlaut. Einleitung,' p. xxxviii. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 279 

" would have men think that his whole book is com- 
posed by Moses." They do not indeed admit the con- 
clusion, that what is thus claimed and professed must 
be true ; but, on the contrary, maintain that the actual 
writer lived many centuries after the great Legislator. 
Apparently they do not see that, if their views are 
correct, the whole value of the work is lost — that it 
becomes a mere impudent fraud, utterly unworthy of 
credit, which cannot reasonably be attached to any 
statements made by one who would seek to palm on 
the world a gross and elaborate deception. If a work 
has merely gone accidentally by a wrong name, the 
discovery of its spuriousness need not seriously affect 
its authenticity ; but if the writer has set himself to ^. 

personate another man in order to obtain for his state- p 

ments a weight and authority to which they would not 
otherwise be entitled, the detection of the fraud car- 
ries with it the invalidation of the document, by wholly 
destroying our confidence in the integrity of the author. 
Modern Rationalism shrinks from these conclusions. 
It would degrade the Sacred Books, but it would not 
deprive them altogether of an historic character. It 
still speaks of them as sacred, and as entitled to our 
respect and reverence, while it saps the foundations on 
which their claim to our reverence rests, making them 
at best the " pious frauds " of well-intentioned but un- 
veracious religionists. 

8. The external evidence of the Mosaic authorship 
of the Pentateuch is allowed to be extensive ; but it is 
said to be of little worth, in the first place, because the 
witnesses are uncritical.* The Jews and Greeks, who, 
during eighteen centuries, without a dissentient voice _ i 

ascribed the '' Book of the Law " to Moses, were not ' 

acquainted with the modern Critical Analysis, which 
claims to be an infallible judge of the age, and mode 
of composition, of every literary production. It is true 
the witnesses include Apostles,f prophets,:|: confessors,§ 
our Blessed Lord Himself :|1 but the distance of these 

* De Wette, § 164. t John i. 45 ; 2 Cor. iii. 15. 

X Dan. ix. 11 ; Mai iv. 4. § Acts vii. 38. 

II Matt. xix. 7, 8 ; Mark x. 3 ; xii. 26 : Luke xvi. 29 ; xxiv. 27 ; John v. 
46, &c. 



280 ^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 

witnesses from the age of Moses is held to invalidate 
their testimony ;* or if the words of One at least are 
too sacred to be gainsaid, He spoke (it is argued) by 
way of accommodation, in order not to shock the prej- 
udices of the Jews. We are challenged to produce 
witnesses near the time, and told that no evidence to 
the Mosaic authorship " approaches within seven cen- 
turies to the probable age of Moses." f Of course, if 
the antiquity of the Pentateuch be denied, that of the 
later books of the Old Testament is not likely to pass 
unquestioned. But the challenge is really met, and 
answered fully and fairly by an appeal to those books, 
which are the only writings within the period named 
in which any reference to Moses was to be expected. 
The author of Joshua, by many thought to be Joshua 
himself, and, if not he, at least one of his contempora- 
ries, X speaks of " the Book of the Law," § — " the 
Book of the Law of Moses,"|| — a book containing "all 
that Moses commanded,"^ with " blessings and curs- 
ings ; " *^ thus entirely corresponding, so far as the 
description goes, to the work which has always passed 
under Moses' name. The writer of Judges is less 
express ;tt but he so completely agrees in his Account 
of the Hebrew institutions with the Pentateuch, and 
BO closely follows its diction in many places, that a 
candid Rationalist if:!: has been driven to allow, that 
" the arranger of this book was well acquainted with 
the Pentateuch in its entire extent." In Samuel, 
though the Pentateuch itself is not mentioned, there 
are at least two clear citations of it — the passage re- 
specting " the priest's custom with the people,"§§ which 
follows word for word Deut. xviii. 3, and that con- 

* ' Westminster Review,' No. xxxv., p. 35. 

t Ibid. 1. s. c. 

X For proof of this, see the ' Bampton Lectures' for 1859, p. 83, first edi- 
tion. 

§ Josh. i. 8 ; viii. 34. I lb. viii. 31 ; xxiii. 6. 1[ lb. viii. 35. 

** lb. ver. 34; compare Deut. xxvii. and xxviii. Note also the quota- 
tions in Josh. viii. 31, from Deut. xxvii. 5, 6 ; and in Josh, xxiii. 7, from Ex. 
xxiii. 13. 

tt Judg. ii. 15 is probably a reference to Lev. xxvi. 16, 17; and Judg. ill. 
4, to the law generally. 

XX Hartmaun. §§ 1 Sam. ii. 13. 



EsbayVI.] the PENTATEUCH. 281 

ceriimg the '' assembling of women at the door of the 
Tabernacle of the congregation,"^' which is an exact 
repetition of Ex. xxxviii. 8. In Kings and Chronicles 
— both probably compilations made from papers con- 
temporary with the kings whose history is related — the 
references to the work are frequent :f and it is unhesi- 
tatingly assigned to Moses,:]: as indeed is admitted on 
all hands. 

It thus appears that the Pentateuch is either cited, 
or mentioned as the work of Moses, by almost the 
whole series of Jewish historical writers from Moses 
himself to Ezra. The first testimony occurs within 
(probably) half a century of Moses' decease, and is 
by a writer who may have known him personally. It 
is rarely indeed that we have evidence of this satisfac- 
tory and conclusive character with respect to the genu- 
ineness of any ancient work. 

9. With regard to profane testimony, it must be 
allowed that none of it is very ancient. But this simply 
results from the fact that none of the earlier authors 
have occasion to mention the Jews, or to touch the 
subject of their literature. The first who do so — 
Manetho and Hecatseus of Abdera, an Egyptian and a 
Greek — are in accordance with the native authorities, 
ascribing the law of the Jews, which is represented as 
existing in a written form, to Moses. And the later 
classical writers, with but one exception, are of the 
same opinion. 

10. To this direct testimony the adversaries of the 
Mosaic authorship are wont to oppose certain difficul- 
ties, which militate (they argue) against the notion that 
the work is even of the age of Moses. The most im- 
portant of these is the objection of De Wette, that the 
book is altogether beyond the literary capabilities of 
the age, containing within.it every element of Hebrew 
literature in the highest perfection to which it ever 
attained, and thus (he thinks) necessarily belonging to 

* 1 Sam. ii. 22. 

t 1 Kings ii. 3; 2 Kings xxii. 8; xxiii. 3; 2 Chron. xxiii. 18: xxr. 4: 
xxxy. 12. 

X 1 Kings ii. 3 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 25 ; 2 Chron. xxiii. 18, &c. 



282 -^IDS TO FAITH. [Essay YI. 

the acme and not to the infancy of the nation.* "Were 
this statement correct, we should indeed have a strange 
phenomenon to account for, though one which could 
not be pronounced impossible, if the Divine as well as 
the human authorship were taken into consideration. 
God might have chosen to assign to the first burst of 
written Eevelation a literary perfection never after- 
wards to be exceeded or even equalled. He might 
have given to His first mouthpiece, Moses, such powers 
of mind and such a mastery over the Hebrew language 
as " to leave nothing for succeeding authors but to fol- 
low in his footsteps." The fact, however, is not really 
so. De "Wette's statement is a gross exaggeration of 
the reality. Considered as a literary work, the Penta- 
teuch is not the production of an advanced or refined, 
but of a simple and rude age. Its characteristics are 
plainness, inartificiality, absence of rhetorical orna- 
ment, and occasional defective arrangement. The 
only style which it can be truly said to bring to perfec- 
tion, is that simple one of clear and vivid narrative, 
which is always best attained in the early dawn of a 
nation's literature, as a Herodotus, a Froissart, and a 
Stow sufficiently indicate. In other respects it is quite 
untrue to say that the work goes beyond all later 
Hebrew efforts. We look in vain through the Penta- 
teuch for the gnomic wisdom of Solomon, the eloquent 
denunciations of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, or the lofty 
flights of Isaiah. It is absurd to compare the song of 
Moses, as a literary production, even with some of the 
Psalms of David, much more to parallel it with 
E^ekiel's eloquence and Homeric variety, or Isaiah's 
awful depth and solemn majesty of repose. In a liter- 
ary point of view it may be questioned whether Moses 
did so much for the Hebrews as Homer for the Greeks, 
or whether his writings had really as great an influence 
on the after productions of his countrymen. And if 
his literary greatness still .surprises us, if Hebrew liter- 
ature still seems in his person to reach too suddenly a 
high excellence, albeit not so high a one as has been 

* ' Einleitung,' § 163, sub. fin. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 283 

argued — let us remember, in the first place, that Moses 
was not, any more than Homer, the first writer of his 
nation, but only happens to be the first whose writings 
have come down to us. " Yixere fortes ante Agamem- 
nona." Moses seems so great because we do not 
possess the works of his predecessors, and so are "unable 
to trace the progress of Hebrew literatnre np to him. 
Had we the " songs " of Israel,* and the '' book of the 
wars of tlie Lord," which he quotes,t we might find him 
no literary phenomenon at all, but as a writer merely 
on a level with others of his age and nation. Again, 
we must not forget to take into consideration the stim- 
ulus which contact with the cultivation of Egypt would 
naturally have given to Hebrew literature during the 
two centuries preceding Moses. If we may trust the 
modern decipherers of Egyptian papyri, literature in 
Egypt had reached a tolerably advanced stage in the. 
time of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, under 
one or other of which Moses was in all probability born 
and bred. "The art of writing books was invented 
ages before the time of Moses ; " :): and had been car- 
ried further in Egypt than in any other country. His- 
tory, epistolary correspondence, and novel-writing were 
known and practised ; so that the composition of an 
extensive work possessing literary merits even of a 
high order would be no strange thing in the case of 
one bred up in the first circles of Egyptian society, 
and " learned in all the wisdom " of that ingenious 
people. 

11. Besides this general objection, there are a cer- 
tain number of particular passages which, it is said, 
record facts later than the time of Moses, and thus 
could not have been written by him. Such are sup- 
posed to be the mention of Dan instead of Laish in 
Gen. xiv. 14 ; of Hebron instead of Kirjath-Arba or 
Mamre in Genesis § and Numbers ; || and the list of the 
kings of Edom in Gen. xxxvi. Now in none of these 

* Num. xxi. 17 ; compare Ex. xv. 1. f Num. xxi. 14. 

X Bunsen, 'Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 384. Compare 'Cambridge Essays' for 
1858, pp. 230-260. 

§ Gen. xiii. 18 ; xxiii. 2, 19 ; xxxr. 27, &c. H Num. xiii. 22. 



284 ^I^S "^O FAITH. [EssatVI. 

cases is it really impossible tliat Moses may have writ- 
ten the passages. Tlie Dan intended may be Dan- 
jaan,* and not Laisb. Hebron may have been a name 
of the city called also Mamre and Kirjath-Arba, within 
the lifetime of Moses. Even the eight kings of Edom 
may possibly be a dynasty of monarchs intervening 
between Esau and Moses, the last of the eight being 
Moses' contemporary, as conjectured by Havernick.f 
The remarkable expression, " These are the kings that 
reigned in the land of Edom, hefore there reigned any 
Mng over the children of Israel^'' may be understood ' 
prophetically. Moses may have intended in the passage 
to mark his full belief in the promises made by God 
to Abraham and Jacob \X ^^^^^ " kings should come out 
of their loins," a belief which he elsewhere expresses 
very confidently. § There is no really valid or insuper- 
able objection to any of these explanations ; which may 
not strike us as clever or dexterous, yet which may be 
true nevertheless ; for " Le vrai n'est pas toujour s le 
'Ovaisem'bldbleP 

12. Or the right explanation may be the more com- 
monly received one — ^that these words, phrases, and 
passages, together with a few others similar to them, 
are later additions to the text, either adopted into it 
upon an authoritative revision, such as that ascribed 
to Ezra, or, perhaps, accidentally introduced through 
the mistakes of copyists, who brought into the text 
what had been previously added, by way of exegesis, 
in the margin. Such additions constantly occur in the 
case of classical writers ; and there is no reason to sup- 
pose that a special providence would interfere to pre- 
vent their occurrence in the Sacred Yolume. "VYe " have 
our treasure in earthen vessels." God gives us His 
Revelation, but leaves it to us to preserve it by the 
ordinary methods by which books are handed down 
to posterity. No doubt its transcendent value has 
caused the bestowal of especial care and attention on 
the transmission of the Sacred Yolume ; and the result 

* 2 Sam. xxiv. 6. t * Einleitung,' § 124 

X Gen. xvii. 6, 16 ; xxxv. 11. § Deut. xrii. 14-20. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 285 

is that no ancient collection has come down to ns nearly 
so perfect, or with so few corruptions and interpola- 
tions ; bnt to declare that there are none, is to make 
an assertion improbable d jpriori^ and at variance with 
the actual phenomena. The sober-minded in every 
age have allowed that the written Word, as it has come 
down to "US, has these slight imperfections, which no 
more interfere with its value than the spots upon the 
sun detract from his brightness, or than a few marred 
and stunted forms destroy the harmony and beauty of 
Nature. 

13. One other line of objection requires a few words 
of notice. The whole Levitical system, it is sometimes 
said, was an after-growth from the real Mosaic law, 
which went but little, if at all, beyond the Decalogue. 
This is thought to be evidenced by the scantiness of 
any traces of Levitical worship throughout the period 
of the Judges, and the infraction of various precepts 
of the ceremonial law from the time of Joshua to that 
of JSTehemiah. But it has been shown"^ that though 
the Book of Judges exhibits a very disordered political 
and religious condition of the nation, and from its nature 
— biographical rather than historical — is likely to con- 
tain but little regarding the Mosaical institutions, yet 
it does, in point of fact, bear witness to the knowledge 
and practical existence during the period whereof it 
treats, of a very considerable number of those usages 
which are specially termed Levitical. The sacred 
character of the Levites, their dispersion among the 
different tribes, the settlement of the High-Priesthood 
in the family of Aaron, the existence of the Ark of the 
Covenant, the power of inquiring of God and obtaining 
answers, the irrevocability of a vow, the distinguishing 
mark of circumcision, the distinction betw^een clean and 
unclean meats, the law of the Nazarite, the use of burnt- 
offerings and peace-offerings, the employment of trum- 
pets as a means of obtaining Divine aid in war, the 
impiety of setting up a king, are severally acknowl- 
edged in the Book of Judges, and constitute together 

* By Harernick. * Einleitung,' § 136, 



286 -^^^S TO FAITH. - [Essay VI. 

very good evidence that the Mosaic ceremonial law 
was already in force, and, though disregarded in many- 
points by the mass, was felt as binding by all those 
who had any real sense of religion. The ritual, as a 
whole, is clearly not of later introduction than the time 
of the Judges, since twelve or thirteen of its main points 
are noted as being at that time in force. Why, then, 
should we suppose, merely because the book is silent 
on the subject, that the other enactments which are in 
the same spirit and are inextricably intertwined with 
these, were not known at the period ? It is always 
dangerous to build on silence. Here the silence is only 
partial ; and the half-utterance which we have is suffi- 
cient to indicate what the full answer would have been, 
had it come within the scope of the writer to deliver 
it. There is thus ample reason to conclude that the 
Levitical law was complete in all its parts before the 
time of the Judges. 

What, then, shall we say to its infractions? what 
to David's " priests of the tribe of Judah ? " what to 
Solomon himself offering sacrifice ? what more espe- 
cially to the suspension of the Feast of Tabernacles for 
eight hundred years from Joshna to Nehemiah ?* Are 
they compatible with the existence of the Pentateuch 
at the time, and with an acknowledgment of its Divine 
authority on the part of those who disobeyed its injunc- 
tions ? Even if we allow them all to be infractions,f 

* * Westminster Eeview,' No. xxxv., p. Sfi. The writer gives no reference, 
except to Nehemiah viii, 17, which shows (he thinks) that " for 800 years, 
from the days of Joshua to those of Ezra, the Feast of Tabernacles was un- 
known in Israel." Probably he would regard " David's priests of the tribe 
of Judah" as mentioned in 2 Sam. viii. 18, where the Hebrew has fii^fl's 
which commonly means "priests;" while for "Solomon's sacrifices" we 
should be referred to 1 Kings viii. 5, 62-64 ; 2 Chr. v. 6 ; vii. 4, 5 ; and 
viii. 12. 

+ In point of fact, none of the infractions need be allowed. David's 
"priests of the tribe of Judah" are probably not "priests," but "princes," 
or " chief rulers," as our Authorized Version renders. (See Buxtorf ad voc. 
"jflS, and compare Gesenius ad eand., who allows that 'til. may mean " a 
prince ; " though he prefers in this place to translate " priests," and to under- 
stand " ecclesiastical counsellors." Note also that the LXX. give avXdpxoi-i-, 
" chamberlains," and that in the parallel passage, 1 Chron. xviii. 17, the ex- 
pression used is~b^n ^;^b d'^airji'nin, "chief" or "first about the king.") 
With regard to Solomon's ' sacrifices, \t is nowhere either stated or implied 



Essay VL] THE PENTATEUCH. 287 

we may still answer that undoubtedly they are. An 
authority may be acknowledged which is not obeyed. 
Precej)ts may be heard, read, and known, may be as 
familiar as household words in the mouths of persons, 
and yet may not be carried out in act. There would 
be nothing more strange in David's breaking the Leviti- 
cal law with respect to priesthood in the case of his 
sons, than in his infraction of the moral law respecting 
chastity in the case of Uriah's wife. There would be 
no greater marvel in Solomon's taking it upon himself 
to offer sacrifice tlian in his marrying wives from the 
forbidden nations. There would be nothing harder to 
understand in the discontinuance after a while of one 
of the great Mosaical feasts, than in the introduction 
and stubborn maintenance from one generation to an- 
other of idolatrous rites. The moral law, admitted to 
have been given by Moses, was broken constantly in 
almost every clause ; why then should infractions of 
the ceremonial law disprove its having come from 
him ? 

14. The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is 
therefore a thing which, to say the least, has not been 
hitherto disproved ; and the ingenious attempts of the 
modern reconstructive criticism to resolve the work 
into its various elements, and to give an account of the 
times when and the persons by whom they were sev- 
erally composed, even if they had no other fault, must 
be pronounced premature; for until it is shown that 
the book was not composed by its reputed author, the 
mode and time of its composition are not fit objects 
of research. The theological student may congratu- 
late himself that this is so, and that he is not called 
upon to study and decide between the twenty different 
views — each more complicated than the last — which 
Continental critics, from Astruc to Bunsen, have put 
out on this apparently inexhaustible subject. 

that he sacrificed with his own hand. *' The priests" are mentioned as pres- 
ent with him at the time (1 Kings viii. 6 ; 2 Chron. v. 7 ; vii. 2, 6), and it is 
most probable that he used their services. Evidently he could not himself 
have slain the 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep of one sacrifice (1 Kings viii. 
63). And Nehemiah, in viii. 17, i)robablj only means that no such celebra- 
tion of the feast had taken place since the time of Joshua. 



288 -^^^ TO FAITH. [EssatVI. 

15. It is sometimes said that questions of genuine- 
ness are matters of mere idle curiosity, and that authen- 
ticity is alone of importance. In an historical work 
especially, what we want to know is, not by whom it 
is written, but whether the narrative which it contains 
is true. This last, no doubt, is our ultimate object; 
but it not unfrequently happens that, for the purpose 
of deciding it, we have to consider the other point ; 
since the genuineness is often the best guarantee of the 
authenticity. How entirely would it change our es- 
timate of Xenophon's ' Anabasis,' were we to find that 
it was composed under the name of Xenophon by a 
Greek of the time of the Antonines ! Xo works are more 
valuable for history than autobiographies ; and when 
we come upon a document claiming any such character, 
it is of great importance to see whether upon exami- 
nation the . character is sustained or no. Given the 
genuineness of such a work, and the authenticity follows 
almost as a matter of course, unless it can be shown 
that the writer is un veracious, and wished to deceive. 
Rationalists have not failed to perceive the force of this 
reasoning with respect to the Pentateuch; and hence their 
laborious efforts to disprove its genuineness. Strauss 
remarks naively enough — "The books which describe 
the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and their 
wanderings through the wilderness, bear the name of 
Moses, who, being their leader, would undoubtedly give 
a faithful history of these occurrences, unless he designed 
to deceive; and who, if his intimate connection with 
Deity described in these books be historically true, was 
likewise eminently qualified, by virtue of such con- 
nection, to produce a credible history of the earlier 
periods." " This admission on the part of the most ex- 
treme of Rationalists is sufiicient to show that, at least 
in the case before us, it is not irrelevant or unimportant 
to attempt to establish the genuineness of the record. 

16. Before the final close of this portion of the in- 
quiry, it will perhaps be best to state distinctly in what 
sense it is intended to maintain that Moses w^as the 

* * Leben Jesu/ Einleitung, § 13. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 289 

author of the Pentateuch. In the first place, it is not 
intended to assert that he was the original composer of 
all the documents contained in his volume. The Book 
of Genesis bears marks of being to some extent a compi- 
lation. Moses probably possessed a number of records, 
some of greater, some of less antiquity, whereof, under 
Divine guidance, he made use in writing the history of 
mankind up to his own time. It is possible that the 
Book of Genesis may have been, even mainly, com- 
posed in this way from ancient narratives, registers, 
and biographies, in part the property of the Hebrew 
race, in part a possession common to that race with 
others. Moses, guided by God's Spirit, would choose 
among such documents those Avhich were historically 
true, and which bore on the religious history of the 
human race. He would not be bound slavishly to 
follow, much less to transcribe them, but would curtail, 
expand, adorn, complete them, and so make them thor- 
oughly liis own, infusing into them the religious tone 
of his own mind, and at the same time re- writing them 
in his own language. Thus it would seem that Genesis 
was produced. With regard to the remainder of his 
history, he would have no occasion to use the labours 
of others, but would write from his own knowledge. 

In the second place, it is not intended to deny that 
the Pentateuch may have undergone an authoritative 
revision by Ezra, when the language may have been to 
some extent modernised, and a certain number of par- 
enthetic insertions may have been made into the text. 
The Jewish tradition on this head seems to deserve 
attention from its harmony with what is said of Ezra in 
the book which bears his name.^' And this authoritative 
revision would account at once for the language not 
being more archaic than it is, and for the occasional 
insertion of parentheses of the nature of a comment. 
It would also explain the occurrence of " Chaldaisni " 
in the text.f 

* See Lord Arthur Hervey's article on 'Ezra/ in Dr. Smith's 'Biblical 
Dictionary/ vol. i., p. 606. 

t Hirzel, ' De Chaldaismi Biblici origine/ pp. 5 et seqq. There is also 
another mode in which the "Chaldaisms" may be accounted for. As 
13 



290 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 

Thirdly, it is, of course, not intended to include in 
the Pentateuch the last chapter of Denteronomy, which 
was evidently added after Moses' death, probably by 
the writer of the Book of Joshua. 

IT. The authenticity of the Pentateuch has been 
recently called in question, principally on the following 
points : — 1. The chronology, which is regarded as very 
greatly in deficiency; 2. The account given of the 
Flood, which is supposed to magnify a great calamity 
in Upper Asia into a general destruction of the human 
race ; 3. The ethnological views, which are said to be 
sometimes mistaken ; 4. The patriarchal genealogies, 
which are charged with being purely mythical; 5. The 
length of tlie lives of the Patriarchs, which is thought 
to be simply impossible ; and 6. The duration of the 
sojourn in Egypt, which is considered incompatible 
with the number of Israelites on entering and quitting 
the country. It is proposed, in the remainder of this 
paper, to consider briefly these six subjects. 

I. According to Baron Bunsen, the historic records 
of Egypt reach up to the year b.c. 9085. A sacerdotal 
monarchy was then established, and Bytis, the Thebau 
priest of Ammon, was the first king. Before this Egypt 
had been republican, and sej^arate governments had 
existed in the different nomes. Egyptian nationality 
commenced as early as b. c. 10,000. These conclusions 
are vaguely said to be drawn "from Egyptian records,""^ 
or " from the monuments and other records ;" f expres- 
sions apt to beget a belief that there is really monu- 
mental evidence for them. Let us then see, in the first 
place, what is the true basis on which they rest. 

The Egyptian monuments contain no continuous 
chronology, and no materials from which a continuous 
chonological scheme can be framed.:}: The possibility 

Chaldee and Hebrew are sister tongues, having one common parent, the 
forms and expressions in question may have been common to both at first, 
but have died out in the Hebrew while they were retained in the Chaldee. 
Movers observes with reason : — ''Aramaic forms in a book are either a sign 
of a very early or of a very late composition." ('Bonner Zeitschrift fiir 
Philosophie,' xvi. 157.) Those in Genesis may be really "Archaisms." 

* ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 54. t Bunsen's ' Egypt,' vol. iv., p. 553. 

X '* The history of the dynasties preceding the 18th," says Mr. Stuart 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 291 

of constructing sncli a scheme depends entirely npon 
the outline which has been preserved to its of the 
Sebennytic priest Manetho, who composed a history of 
Egypt under the earl}^ Ptolemies. This outline is in a 
very imperfect condition ; and the two versions of it, 
which we find in Syncellus and in the Armenian Euse- 
bius, differ considerably. Still both agree in represent- 
ing Egypt as governed by thirty dynasties of kings 
from Menes to Alexander, and the sum of the years 
wdiicli they assign to these dynasties is a little above 
(or a little below) 5000. The monuments have proved 
two things with respect to these lists : they have shown, 
in the first place, that (speaking generally) they are his- 
torical — that the persons mentioned were real men, who 
actually lived and reigned in Egypt ; while, secondly, 
tliey have shown that though all reigned in Egypt, all 
did not reign over the whole of Egypt, but while some 
were kings in one part of the country, others ruled in 
another. It is allowed on all hands — by M. Bunsen' 
no less than by others — that no chronological scheme 
of any real value can be formed from Manetho's lists 
until it be first determined, either wdiicli dynasties and 
monarchs w^ere contemporary, or what deduction from 
the sum total of the dynastic years is to be made on 
account of contemporaneousness. M. Bunsen regards 
this point as one which Manetho himself determined, 
and assumes that he was sure to determine it aright. 
He finds a statement in Syncellus,* that "Manetho 
made his dynasties cover a space of 113 generations, 
or 3555 years ;" and he accepts this statement as com- 
pletely removing the difiiculty, and absolutely estab- 
lishing the historic fact that the accession of Menes to 
the crown of Egypt -took place more than thirty-six 
centuries before our era.f He then professes to follow 

Poole, " is not told by any continuous series of monuments. Except those of 
the 4th and 12th dynasties there are scarcely any records of the age left -to 
the present day." (' Biblical Dictionary,' vol. 1. p. 500.) M. Bunsen also 
says, in one place, of the Egyptian monuments : — " Such documents cannot 
indeed compensate for the want of written history. Even Chronology, its 
framework, cannot he elicited from tliemr — (' Egypt/ vol. i., p. 32.) 

* * Chronograph,' p. 52, D. 

+ * Egypt,' vol. i. pp. 86-89. Lepsius, on the same grounds, and keeping 
closer to his authority, places Menes nearly 39 centuries before Christ. 



292 ^II^S TO FAITH. [EssatVL 

Manetlio for the preceding period ; but Iiere he distorts 
and misrepresents him. Manetho gave his Egyptian 
dynasties altogether about 30,000 years. This long 
space he divided, however, into a natural and a super- 
natural period. To the supernatural period, during 
which Egypt was governed by gods, demigods, and 
spirits, he assigned 24,925 years. To the nafm-al pe- 
riod, which began with Menes, he gave at any rate not 
much more than 5000.. M. Bunsen, not content with 
this antiquity, but determining to find (or make) a 
greater, changes the order of Manetho's early dynas- 
ties, and by removing to a higher position, without au- 
thority and of his own mere fancy, one which is plainly 
supernatural, obtains for the natural period four dynas- 
ties, covering a space of 5212 years (or, as he makes it, 
5462 years), which are capable of being represented as 
human. This, then, is the mode in which the date 
B. c. 9085 is reached. It is not obtained from the mon- 
uments, which have no chronology, or at any rate none 
earlier than b. c. 1525. It is not derived from Mane- 
tho, for it is in direct contradiction to his views, more 
than doubling the period during which, according to 
him, Egypt had had human kings. It is a mere theory 
of M. Bunsen's, to square with which Manetho's lists 
have been violently disturbed, and above 5000 years 
subtracted from his divine to be added to his human 
period. 

Even with respect to Menes, and the supposed date 
of B. c. 3892 (according to Lepsius), or b. c. 3623 (ac- 
cording to M. Bunsen), for his accession, on what does 
it in reality depend ? IS'ot on any monumental evi- 
dence, but simply on the supposition that in a certain 
passage (greatly disputed ^) of Syncellus, he has cor- 
rectly represented Manetho's views, and on the further 
supposition that Manetho's views were absolutely right. 
But is it reasonable to suppose that Manetho had data 
for determining with such exactitude an event so re- 

* Bockh in Germany, and Mons. C. Muller in France, have disputed M. 
Bunsen's conclusions from the passage of Syncellus. The latter thinks that 
it is a Pseudo-Manetho to whom Syncellus refers. The former regards the 
passage as corrupt, and suspects that Annianus was quoted, not Manetho. 



Essay YL] THE PENTATEUCH. 293 

mote, even if it be a real event at all,^ as the acces- 
sion of Menes? It is plain and palpable, and moreover 
universally admitted, that between the ancient mon- 
archy (or rather monarchies) of Egypt and the later 
kingdom, there intervened a time of violent disturbance 
— the period known as the domination of the Hyksos — 
during which the native Egyptians suffered extreme 
oppression, and throughout Egypt all was disorder and 
confusion. The notices of this period are so vague and 
uncertain, that moderns dispute whether it lasted 500, 
600, 900, or 2000 years.f Few monuments belong to 
it. It is extremely doubtful whether an Egyptian of 
Manetho's age, honestly investigating the records of 
the past, could have carried on chronology, with any 
approach to exactness, beyond the commencement of 
the eighteenth dynasty, which effected the expulsion 
of the Hyksos or Shepherd kings. From that time 
Egypt had been united, and had been a tolerably set- 
tled monarchy. Previously, the country had been 
divided into a multitude of states, sometimes more, 
sometimes fewer in number, each knowing very little 
of the rest, all inclined to magnify their own duration 
and antiquity, and none able effectually to check the 
others. Let it be granted that Manetlio honestly en- 
deavoured to collect and arrange the lists of kings in 
the several states among wdiich Egypt had been par- 
celled out. What a task was before him ! Eo^yal mon- 
uments, or dynastic lists of better or worse authority, 
might give him the names of the monarchs and the 
number of years that each had borne the royal title. 
But as " association " w^as widely practised in Egypt — . 
two, three, and even more kings occupying the throne 
together — it w^ould have been a w^ork of extreme diifi- 
culty, without full and detailed records, which can 
scarcely be supposed to have generally survived the 

* Whether Menes was an historic personage at all may reasonably be 
doubted. It is not pretended that he left any monuments. As a name 
closely resembling his is found in the earliest traditions of various nations, 
e. g. Menu in India, 31inos in Crete, Manis in Phrygia, Manes in Lydia, and 
Mannus in Germany, there is at least reason to suspect that he belongs to 
myth rather than to history. 

t BuDsen, 'Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 508; <Bibl. Diet.,' vol. i. p. 508. 



294 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VL 

Hyksos period, to make out from the length of the 
reigns the duration of any dynasty. And to determ^ine 
what dynasties were contemporary and what consecu- 
tive would have been a stiil harder task. It is ex- 
tremely doubtful whether Manetho really made any 
effort' to overcome these difficulties. Setting aside the 
single disputed passage of Syncellus, we have no evi- 
dence that he did. His lists, as they have come down 
to us, both in Syncellus and Eusebius, are a mere 
enumeration, in a single line, of thirty dynasties of 
kings, with an estimate of the years of each dynasty, 
evidently formed by merely adding together the years 
of the several reigns. There is no trace in either epit- 
ome of any allowance being made, either on account 
of contemporary kings within a dynasty, or on account 
of contemporary dynasties. Apparently, Manetho 
either declined the task of arranging and completing 
the chronology as one for which he had no sufficient 
data, or preferred to leave the impression on foreigners 
that the dynasties and kings were all consecutive, and 
that Egypt had a history stretching back fifty centuries 
before Alexander ! Other Egyptian priests before him 
had made even greater exaggerations."^ 

If it be still thought that the mere opinion of men 
so well acquainted with the Egyptian monuments, as 
Bunsen and Lepsius, ought to have weight, despite the 
weakness of the argumentative grounds on which they 
rest their conclusions, let it be remembered that others, 
as deeply read in hieroglyphic lore, and as capable of 
forming a judgment, have come to conclusions wholly 
different. Sir Gardner Wilkinson inclines to place the 
accession of Menes about b. c. 2690,f and Mr. Stuart 
Poole gives as his first year b. c. 2717.$ These writers 
believe that the number of contemporaneous dynasties 
has been much under-estimated by the German savans, 
who have especially erred in regarding the Theban 
dynasties as, all of them, subsequent to the Memphite. 
They consider that Manetho's first and third Theban 

* Herod, ii. 100 and 142, 143. 

t See the writer's ' Herodotus,' vol. ii. pp. 342, 843. 

X * Biblical Dictionary,' vol. i. p. 508. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 295 

dynasties were contemporary with his third, fourth, and 
fifth Memphite ; that the first and second Shepherd 
dynasties ruled at the same time in difi'erent parts of 
Lower Egypt ; and that the dynasty of Choites (Mane- 
tho's 14tli) w^as contemporary with the two Shepherd 
dynasties above mentioned, and with the second Theban. 
They do not deny that their arrangement of the dynas- 
ties is to some extent conjectural; but they maintain 
that, while the idea of it was derived from a close in- 
spection of Manetho's lists, it is also " strikingly con- 
firmed by the monuments.''* While names of such 
weight can be quoted on the side of a moderate Egyp- 
tian chronology, it cannot be reasonably argued that 
Egyptian records have disproved the Biblical narrative. 
Still less can it be argued that the records of other 
nations, so far as they have any pretension to be con- 
sidered historical, conflict with the chronology of the 
Bible. The Babylonians indeed, the Indians, and the 
Chinese, in their professed histories of ancient times, 
carry back the antiquity of our race for several hun- 
dred thousand years. But it is admitted that in every 
case these large numbers are purely mythical ; and, in 
truth, the authentic histories of all these nations begin 
even later than the Egyptian. India has no historical 
documents earlier than the third,f or China than the 
sixth century b. c. Indian history scarcely goes back 
beyond the time of Alexander ; Chinese is not thought 
by those who place most faith in the early literature 
of the country to ascend any higher than the year b. c, 
26374 The Babylonian historian, Berosus, while he 
claimed for the human race an antiquity of above 
466,000 years, arranged his dynasties in such a way as 
to make it palpable that the historic period began, at 
the earliest, in b. c. 2458. This is the conclusion of 
Sir Henry Rawlinson in England, of Gutschmid and 
Brandis in Grermany.§ These critics divide the nine 

* Ibid. p. 507. 

t See the late Pi-ofessor Wilson's Intr.od action to the ' Rig- Veda Sanhita,' 
p.p. xlvi., xlvii. 

X Remusat, ' Nouveaux Melanges Asiatiques,' vol. i. p. 65 ; Bunsen, 
* Egypt/ vol. iii. pp. 379-407, 

§ Gutschmid, ' Rheinisches Museum,' vol. viii. p. 252 et seqq. ; Brandis, 
'Rerum Assjriarum Tempora emendata,' pp. 16, 17. 



296 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 

dynasties of Berosus into two mythic ones (reigning 
the extravagant periods of 432,000 and 34:,080 years), 
and seven historic ones, all reigning moderate and pos- 
sible periods, varying between 87 and 526 years. It 
might have seemed incredible that in the nineteenth 
century any critic could take a diiierent view. M. 
Bunsen, however, believing that he has " devised a 
method"* whereby the historical part of the second 
dynasty, which he arbitrarily divides, may be reduced 
to 1550 years, adds that space of time to Berosus' his- 
toric chronology, and decides that the regular registra- 
tion of the oldest Chaldsean kings commenced b. c. 
3784. He thus assumes the partially historic character 
of a dynasty said to have reigned more than 34,000 
years, two kings of which — Chomasbelus and Evechius 
— are made to occupy the throne for above 5000 years ! 
It seems needless to examine the "method" whereby, 
from data thus manifestly unhistoric, an exact conclu- 
sion, claiming to be historically certain, is drawn.f 

On the whole it w^ould seem that no profane history 
of an authentic character mounts up to an earlier date 
than the 27th or 28th century before Christ. Egyptian 
history begins about B.C. 2700 ; Chinese, perhaps, in 
B.C. 2637 ; Babylonian in b.c. 2458 ; Assyrian in b.c. 
1273 ; Greek, with the Trojan War, in b.c. 1250, or, 
perhaps, with Hercules, a century earlier ; Lydian in 
B.C. 1229 ; Phcenician about the same period ;:j: Car- 
thaginian in B.C. 880 ; Macedonian about b.c 720 ; 
Median not before b.c. 708 ; Koman in the middle of 
the same century ; Persian in b.c. 558 ; Indian, about 
B.C. 350 ; Mexican and Peruvian not till after our era.§ 

* 'Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 411. 

t One method, however, whereby M. Bunsen exaggerates his Babylonian 
chronology seems worthy of notice. It is the method of raistranslation. 
Philo Byblius having observed in his work about Cities that Babylon was 
founded 1002 years (erecri xihiois hvo) before Semiramis, M. Bunsen renders 
the words in brackets by " Uvo thousand years," thus gaining for his chro- 
nology near a thousand years at a stroke. (See his 'Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 414, 
and again p. 491.) 

X See the writer's ' Herodotus,' vol. iv. p. 249. The first known Phoeni- 
cian king is Abibal, the father of Hiram, David's contemporary. He cannot 
be placed earlier than b.c. 1100. 

§ See Prescott, ' History of the Conquest of Mexico,' vol. i. p. 13 ; * His- 
tory of the Conquest of Peru,' vol. i. pp. 10-14. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 297 

The oldest human constructions remaining npon the 
earth are the Pyramids, and these date from about b.c. 
2400 ; * the brick temples of Babylonia seem, none of 
them, earlier than b.c. 2300 ; f b.c. 2000 would be a 
high date for the first Cyclopian walls in Greece or 
Italy ; the earliest rock inscriptions belong to nearly 
the same period. If man has existed upon the earth 
ten or twenty thousand years, as M. Bunsen supposes, 
why has he left no vestiges of himself till within the 
last five thousand ? ;{: It cannot be said that his earlier 
works would necessarily have perished ; for there is 
nothing to hinder the Pyramids or the Birs Nimrud 
from standing several thousand years longer. It is re- 
marked that in Egypt the most ancient monuments 
exhibit but slight traces of rudeness, and that the arts 
within two centuries of Menes are in a very advanced 
condition, so that civilisation must have made great 
progress even before the age of Menes. But " the con- 
stitutional development of Egyptian life " into the con- 
dition reached in the time of the early monuments, 
does not require a term of five or six thousand years, 
as M. Bunsen argues,§ but rather one of five or six 
hundred years, wliich is what the Biblical numbers 
will allow. There is nothing surprising in a high 
civilisation, even within a very short time from the 
Deluge ; for the arts of life, which flourished in the 
ante-diluvian world,] would have been preserved by 
those who survived the catastrophe, and might rapidly 
revive among their descendants. Kather, it is surpris- 
ing that, except in Egypt, there should be so few traces 
of an early civilisation. Babylonian art, for many cen- 

* Wilkinson in the writer's * Herodotus,' vol. ii. p. 343 ; Stuart Poole in 
the ' Biblical Dictionary,' vol. i. p. 508. 

+ Sir H. Rawlinson in the writer's ' Herodotus,' vol. i. p. 435. 

X The " flint weapons in the drift," and Mr. Horner's Egyptian pottery, 
will be said to be such vestiges. But the extremely doubtful age of the 
latter has been well shown by the ' Quarterly Review' (No. 210, pp. 419-421). 
The value of the former as evidence of extreme human antiquity must depend 
on two questions, neither of which has yet been solved — 1. Are they of the 
same age as the formation in which they are found? and 2. Is that forma- 
tion itself of an antiquity very remote ? It has been clearly shown by a 
writer in 'Blackwood's Magazine' (No. 540, pp. 422-439), that the high an- 
tiquity of the drift is at any rate "not proven," 

§ 'Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 571. y Gen. iv. 20-22. 

13* 



298 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay YL 

turies after the first establishment of the kingdom (b.c. 
2458), is exceedingly rude and primitive ; the Greek 
and Italian buildings, approaching to the same date, 
are of the roughest construction ; it is not till about 
the year b.c. 1000 that a really advanced civilisation 
appears in any part of Asia, nor much before b.c. 600 
that it can be traced in Europe. Thus, monumental 
and historical evidence alike indicate that the " Ori- 
gines" of our race are recent, and the dates established 
on anything like satisfactory evidence, fall, in every 
case, within the time allowed to post-diluvian man by 
Scripture. 

For the date of the Deluge, which we are most 
justified in drawing from the Sacred documents, is not, 
as commonly supposed, b.c. 2348, but rather b.c. 3099, 
or even b.c. 3159 — sixty years earlier.^ The modern 
objectors to the Chronology of Scripture seek common- 
ly to tie down their opponents to tlie present Hebrew 
text ;f but there is no reason why they should submit 
to this restriction. The Septuagint Version was re- 
garded as of primary authority during the first ages of 
the Christian Church : it is the version commonly 
quoted in the J^ew Testament ; and thus, where it 
dififers from the Hebrew, it is at least entitled to equal 
attention. The larger chronology of the Septuagint 
would, therefore, even if it stood alone, have as good a 
claim as the shorter one of the Hebrew text, to be con- 
sidered the Chronology of Scripture. It does not, how- 
ever, stand alone. For the period between the Flood 
and Abraham, the Septuagint has the support of an- 
other ancient and independent version — the Samaritan. 
It is argued that the Septuagint numbers were enlarged 
by the Alexandrian Jews in order to bring the Hebrew 
chronology into harmony with the Egyptian ;:j: but there 
is no conceivable reason why the Samaritans should 
have altered their Pentateuch in this direction, and no 

* See the ' Biblical Dictionary,' sub voc. Chronology, and Mr. W. Palm- 
er's 'Egyptian Chronicles,' p. 896. > 

t Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 402 ; ' Westminster Review,' No. 38, p. 569 ; 
* Essays and Reviews,' pp. 54, 55. 

X ' Westminster Review,' 1. s. c. ; Bunsen, * Egypt,' vol. i. p. 185 ; vol. iv. 
p. 396. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 299 

very ready mode of accounting for the identity* of the 
numbers in these two versions, but by supposing that 
they are the real numbers of the original. This iden- 
tity it has been usual to keep out of sight ; but it is a 
most important feature in the case, and furnishes a 
solid ground for preferring, apart from all historical 
considerations, that longer system of Biblical Chronol- 
ogy with which Egyptian and all other profane history 
is found to be in accordance. 

Besides the purely historic objections to the Bibli- 
cal Chronology which have been here examined, an- 
other semi-historic one has been recently taken, which 
seems to require some notice. Languages, it is said, 
bear traces of having all proceeded from a common 
stock. Time was, when " the whole earth was of one 
language and of one speech. "f But this time must 
have been immensely remote. Languages grow but 
slowly. It has taken nearly 2000 years to develop 
modern French, Italian, and Spanish out of Latin. 
Must it not have taken much longer to develop Latin, 
Greek, German, Celtic, Slavonic, Zend, Sanscrit, out 
of their mother-speech ? And that mother-speech itself 
which had an affinity, and so a connexion, with the 
Semitic and Turanian forms of language, yet was far 
more w^idely sep>arated from them than its daughter 
tongues from one another, what a vast period must 
have been required for its formation and divergence 
from the other linguistic types ! Even the primitive 
tongue itself did not spring to its full height at once, or 
reach the era of decay and change till after a long term 
of years. ,Twenty-one thousand years — " the period of 
one great revolution of the globe upon its axis " — is (we 
are told) " a very probable term for the development of 
human language in the shortest line ;" and so the con- 
clusion is drawm, that the true era of man's creation is 
not B.C. 9085, when Egyptian history is said to have 

* The identity is complete, if we reject from the Septuagint the false 
reading of some copies (179 for 79) in Gen. xi. 24, and omit the interpolated 
Cainan, who was unknown to Philo, Josephus, Theophilus ofAntioch, and 
Eusebius. (See Clinton's ' Fasti Hellenici,' vol. i. p. 287 ; * Biblical Diction- 
ary,' vol. i. p. 319.) + Gen. xi. 1. 



300 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay YL 

begun, nor b.c. 14,000, ^vlien Plamitism and Semitism 
were lirst " deposited," but six thousand years before 
the earlier of these two dates — b.c. 20,000 l^ 

This argument claims an inductive character. It 
bases itself on the historical gromid, that a certain 
number of years have been required for the develop- 
ment of French, Italian, Spanish, Wallachian, &c., out 
of Latin ; and assumes that from this the rate of change 
or growth in language is determinately, or approxi- 
mately, known. The rate is viewed as relative to the 
degree of change or divergence, so that as Celtic, Sla- 
vonic, German, Greek, Latin, and Sanscrit are far more 
unlike one another than French, Italian, and Spanish, 
a far longer period must be allowed for their forma- 
tion.f The argument thus gathers strength at each 
stage ; and as there are at least four stages, the- formula 
becomes something very much like this : — a^lOa + 100 
a-{-1000a=s ; so that it may seem a moderate esti- 
mate to say, that 5=21,000 years. 

But the following considerations detract from the 
force of the reasoning. The induction on which it rests 
is from a single instance — the case of Latin and its 
daughter tongues. It does not at all follow, that 
because a particular language under particular cir- 
cumstances took a certain time to blossom into new 
tongues ; therefore, every other language of a similar 
type, would, under all conceivable circumstances, do 
the same. 

The unit vrhich is assumed to be known, and which 
is made the basis of the whole calculation — the a of the 
above equation — ^is in reality unknown. It is impos- 
sible to say how long it took for Latin to change into 
French or Italian. Latin was probably imperfectly 
learnt by the Italians and the Gauls from the first, and 
a language far more like Italian than classical Latin 
was probably spoken in the provinces of Italy at a very 
early date. "We know at the utmost what the date is 

* Bunsen, 'Egypt,' vol. iv. pp. 560-566, and p. 485. 

t " If the step from Latin to Italian be taken as a unit, the previous step 
must be reckoned at least at ten or at twentir." (Bunsen's ' Egypt,' vol. iv. 
pp. 562, 563.). 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 3QI 

of the first extant Frencli or Italian document. We 
have no means of deciding when French or Italian first 
began to be a spoken tongue. 

The argument assumes as certain that equal linguis- 
tic changes must have occupied equal periods of time 
at all portions of the world's history, which is much 
the same as to assume that constitutional changes in 
states must be equal in equal times ; or that, because 
B, a youth of eighteen, 5 ft. 10 in. high, grew half an 
inch between the 1st of January, 1860, and the 1st of 
January, 1861, therefore he grew at the same rate all 
his previous lifetime. Such an assumption, were it ap- 
plied to discover the age of the youth by one who pos- 
sessed no other data, might lead to the conclusion that 
he verged upon 140 ! It is quite possible that similar 
reasoning, applied to the age of language, may have 
produced a term of years almost equally in excess of 
the truth. 

l^ot only the analogy of growth generally, but cer- 
tain known linguistic facts favour the view, that when 
language was still young, it grew with a rapidity quite 
unknown to its later stages. JSTothing so much tends 
to lix and stereotype a language as a literature. When, 
therefore, there was as yet no literature to keep the 
vagaries of speech in check, it would have been in a 
perpetual flux and change, and may, in a comparatively 
short space, have undergone the greatest modifications. 
Again, when literature is wanting, yet men live to- 
gether in political communities of a large size, the 
requirements of social intercourse with a wide circle act 
as a safeguard against rapid dialectical change. But 
in the simpler and earlier times, before such communi- 
ties were formed, when men were chiefly or wholly 
homades, and lived in small and isolated bodies with- 
out much intercourse with one another, this check 
would not have existed. Linguistic changes may, 
under such circumstances, have taken place with ex- 
traordinary quickness, and a growth equal to that, 
which would in later times, and under other circum- 
stances, have required five hundred or a thousand 



302 ^iI>S TO FAITH. [EssatVI. 

years, may have been contained "vvithin an ordinary 
lifetime. " Tribes," says Professor M. Miiller, '• who 
have no literature, and no sort of intellectual occupa- 
tion, seem occasionally to take a delight in working 
their language to the highest pitch of grammatical ex- 
pansion. The American dialects are a well-known in- 
stance ; and the greater the seclusion of a tribe, the 
more amazing the rank vegetation of their grammar, 
"We can, at present, hardly form a correct idea with 
what feeling a savage nation looks upon its language ; 
whether, it may be, as a plaything, a kind of intellect- 
ual amusement — a maze in which the mind likes to lose 
and to find itself. But the result is the same every- 
where. If the work of agglutination has once com- 
menced, and there is nothing like literature or society 
to keep it within limits, two villages, separated only 
for a few generations, will become mutually unintel- 
ligible. This takes place in America, as well as on the 
borders of China and India ; and in the north of Asia, 
Messerschmidt relates, that the Ostiakes, though really 
speaking the same language everywhere, have pro- 
duced so many words and forms ^peculiar to each tribe, 
that even within the limits of twelve or twenty German 
miles, conversation between them becomes extremely 
difficult. It must be remembered also, that the Dic- 
tionary of these languages is small, if compared with a 
Latin or a Greek Thesaurus. The conversation of no- 
madic tribes moves within a narrow ckcle ; and with 
the great facility of forming new words at random, and 
the great inducement that a solitary life holds out to 
invent for the objects which form the world of a shep- 
herd or huntsman, new appellations — half poetical, per- 
haps, or satirical — we can understand how, after a few 
generations, the dictionary of a nomadic tribe may have 
gone, as it were,- through more than one edition."- 
These observations, which are made in reference to 
Turanian dialects, have a more extended bearing. They 
show that while the inhabitants of the earth continued 
nomadic, and without a literature, language would 

* ' Philosophy of Universal Historr,' vol. iii. p. 4S3. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 303 

alter at a rate very mucli beyond that which is found 
to prevail since they have gathered into large com- 
munities, each with its own treasure of written law, 
legend, or history. 

Further, it is obvious to remark that the whole argu- 
ment turns upon a theory of language, w^hich can 
never be anything more than an hypothesis — a theory, 
moreover, which ignores altogether the confusion of 
Babel, ascribing as it does all the changes and diver- 
sities of human speech to the operation of natural 
causes. Those persons who believe the miracle re- 
corded in Gen. xi. 1-9, will see that if the Divine fiat 
produced in a moment of time a number of diversities 
of speech, Avhich in the natural course of things would 
only have gradually been developed, language can- 
not but present the appearance of being older than it 
really is. 

It seems, therefore, that nothing has really been as 
yet discovered, either in the facts of history, or in those 
of language, that militates against the chronological 
scheme of Scripture, if we regard the Septuagint and 
Samaritan versions as the best exponents of the orig- 
inal text in respect of the genealogy of the Patriarchs 
from Shem to Abraham. Whether the chronology of 
these versions admits of further expansion ; whether, 
since the chronologies of the Hebrew Bible, the Sa- 
maritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint differ, w^e can 
depend on any one of them ; or whether we nmst not 
consider that this portion of revelation has been lost 
to us by the mistakes of copyists or the intentional al- 
terations of system atisers, it is not necessary at present 
to determine. " Our treasure," as before observed, '' is 
in earthen vessels." The revealed Word of God has 
been continued in the world in the same w^ay as other 
written compositions, by the multiplication of copies. 
!No miraculous aid is vouchsafed to the transcribers, 
wdio are liable to make mistakes, and may not always 
have been free from the design of bending Scripture to 
their own views. That we have a' wonderfully pure 
and perfect text of the Pentateuch, considering its an- 



304 ^I^S TO FAITH. |T:ssatYI. 

tiquity, is admitted ; but doubts must ever attach to 
the chronology, not only because in all ancient MSS. 
nnmbers are especially liable to accidental corruption, 
but also, and more especially, from tlie fact tliat there 
is so wide a difference in this respect between the 
Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Greek copies.* Still, 
at present, we haye no need to suppose that the num- 
bers haye in eyery case suffered. All the requirements 
of profane history are sufficiently met by the adoption 
of the Se^Dtuagint and Samaritan date for the Deluge ; 
and this is the date which is really most authoritatiye, 
since it has in its fayour two out of the three ancient 
yersions. 

II. An authentic character is denied to the Penta- 
teuch on account of the narratiye contained in it of the 
great Flood. This narratiye is yiewed as the tradi- 
tional representation of a real eyent, but as unhistoric 
in most of its details, and more especially as untrue in 
regard to the assertion which is so strongly made, that 
all mankind, except a single family, were destroyed on 
the occasion.f The Deluge, it is said, was local, affect- 
ing only that portion of Asia in which were located the 
Arians and the Semites. It did not extend to the 
Egyptians, or to the Chinese, or to the Turanian races 
generally. This conclusion is professedly drawn from 
" the infallible linguistic science," if or, in other words, 
from those yiews of the history of language, the changes 
it has undergone, and the time occupied by them, 
which haye been just shown to be arbitrary and not 
yery tenable hypotheses. It is further regarded as con- 
firmed by the alleged fact, that while among most of 
the Semitic and Arian races there w^as a distinct and 
clear tradition of the Flood, as among the Babylonians, 
the Indians, the Armenians, the Phrygians, the Lithu- 
anians, the Goths, the Celts, and the Greeks ; neither 
in China, nor in Egypt, nor among the " old Turani- 

* Althongli in the list of patriarchs from Shem to Abraham, the Samari- 
tan and the Septuagint coincide, they differ widely in the preceding list from 
Adam to Xoah. The Samaritan has there a term of years even shorter than 
the Hebrew. 

t Gen. vii. 21-23. | Bunseu, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 472, and p. §§9. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 3O5 

ans" was any such tradition current. Here tlie "argu- 
ment is strong ; but it attains its strength by a combi- 
nation of exaggeration on the one side, with understate- 
ment on the other. It is not true that " we find allu- 
sions to the Flood everywhere among the Iranians and 
Semites."* The Flood does not a^Dpear in the Zenda- 
vesta ; it was not, so far as is known, among the tra- 
ditions of the Arabs, or the Phoenicians, or the Eomans, 
or the Slaves. On the other hand, traditions of it were 
not entirely wanting in China, in Egypt, or among the 
Tm'anians. 

The Chinese speak of a "first heaven" — an age of 
innocence, when " the whole creation enjoyed a state 
of happiness ; when everything was beautiful, every- 
thing was good ; all beings were perfect in their kind ;" 
whereto succeeded a " second heaven," introduced by a 
great convulsion. " The pillars of heaven were broken — 
the earth shook to its foundations — the heavens sunk 
lower towards the north — the sun, the moon, and the 
stars changed their motions — the earth fell to pieces ; 
and the waters enclosed within its hosoni hurst forth 
with violence^ and overflowed it. Man having rebelled 
against heaven, the system of the universe was totally 
disordered. The sun was eclipsed, the planets altered 
their courses, and the grand harmony of nature was 
disturbed. "f 

In Egypt, according to Plato, the teaching of the 
priests was, not that there had been no Deluge, but that 
there had been several. They believed that from time 
to time, in consequence of the anger of the Gods, the 
earth was visited by a terrible catastrophe. The agent 
of destruction was sometimes fire, sometimes water. 
In the conflagrations, all countries were burnt up but 
Egypt, which was protected by the Nile ; and in the 
deluges, all were submerged except Egypt, where rain 
never fell. The last catastrophe, they said, had been a 
deluge ; it took place above 8000 years before Solon, 
and not only swept away the Greeks, as they were 
themselves aware, but permanently submerged a vast 

* Bunsen, 'Egypt,' vol. ir. p. 464. 

t Faber, ' Horse Mosaicze,' ch. iv, pp. 147, 148. 



306 -^^^^ ^^ FAITH. [Essay VI. 

island in the Atlantic Ocean, previously the seat of a 
great conquering monarchy.* It does not destroy the 
traditional character of these latter statements, that they 
are coupled with a theory of repeated mundane catas- 
trophes ; neither does it much lessen the value of the 
evidence, in the case of a people making such absurd 
pretensions to antiquity as the Egyptians, that Egypt is 
supposed to have been exempt from the general ruin. 
M. Bunsen admits that the oldest traditions of Egypt 
" seem here and there to retain the echoes of a knowl- 
edge of some violent convulsions in nature,"f while he 
denies that these traditions constitute a reminiscence of 
the historical Flood- It is at least as reasonable to hold 
that the one convulsion of which they had some real 
knowledge was that great catastrophe, and that in re- 
gard to the rest they merely represented historically the 
conclusions at which they had arrived by speculation. 

With regard to the belief of the Turanian races, it 
may be true that those of Europe and Asia have no tra- 
ditions of a Deluge among them, although this point has 
hardly been as yet sufficiently established ; but if we 
hold (as is now commonly done)J the Malays to be a Tu- 
ranian offshoot, and the Polynesian islanders to be Ma- 
laj^s, then it must be allowed that traces of a belief in 
the Deluge exist also in this ethnic family. ''Tradi- 
tions of the Deluge," says Mr. Ellis, " have been found 
to exist among the natives of the South Sea Islands, 
from the earliest periods of their history. . . . The 
principal facts are the same in the traditions prevailing 
among the inhabitants of the different groups, although 
they differ in several minor particulars. In one group 
the accounts stated, that in ancient times Taarsa, the 
principal god according to their mythology, being angry 
with men on account of their disobedience to his will, 
overturned the world into the sea, when the earth sunk 
in the w^aters, excepting a few projecting points, which, 
remaining above its surface, constituted the present clus- 

* 'Timseus,' p. 21. f 'Egypt/ voL iv. p. 559. 

X M. Muller, in the * Philosophy of Universal History,' vol. iii. pp. 403- 
429 ; ' Languages of the Seat of War,' p. 110, 1st edition. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 397 

ter of islands. The memorial preserved by the inhabi- 
tants of Eimeo states, that after the inundation of the 
land, when the water subsided, a man landed from a 
canoe near Tiataepua in their island, and erected an al- 
tar in honour of his god. The tradition which prevails 
in the Leeward Ishmds is intimately connected with the 
island of Raiatea." Here the story is that a fisherman 
disturbed the sea-god wdth his hooks, wdiereupon the god 
determined to destroy mankind. The fisherman, how- 
ever, obtained mercy, and w^as directed to take refuge 
in a certain small islet, wdiither he betook himself with 
his wife, his child, one friend, and specimens of all the 
domestic animals. The sea then rose, and submerged 
the other islands, destroying all the inhabitants. But 
the fisherman and his companions w^ere unharmed, and 
afterwards removing from their islet to Raiatea became 
the progenitors of "the present people.* Thus, if the 
South Sea Islanders belong to the Turanian family, it 
would seem that that family, no less than the Arian and 
Semitic, has reminiscences of the Great Catastrophe 
which once befel mankind.f 

The result is, that there is no marked difference, in 
respect of traditions of the Deluge, between the different 
races of men. 'No race is without some tradition on the 
subject, while in none is the tradition spread universally 
among all the nations into which the race subdivides. 
Various circumstances have caused the event to be viv- 
idly or faintly apprehended, to be stored in the memory 
of a nation, or to be allowed to fade from it. If the Se- 
mitic tradition is the clearest and most circumstantial, 
wdiile the Turanian is the dimmest and slightest, it is 
p)robably because the Turanians generally were without 
a literature, while among the Semites the tradition took 
a written form early. If in Egypt, while the Deluge is 
not unknown, it makes little figure, notwithstanding the 
early use of letters in that coimtry, it is perhaps because 
the Egyptians did not choose to keep it in mind, since, 

* ' Polynesian Researches,' vol. ii. pp. 57-59. 

+ The Mexicans and Peruvians, who had very clear traditions of the 
Flood, were also probably of Turanian origin. 



308 ^II^S TO FAITH, [Essay VI. 

in their desire to be considered autoclithonons and of 
immense antiquity, they seem to have^ determinately 
severed all the links which connected them with their 
primitive Asiatic abodes.^ If, on the contrary, among 
the Arians, though they had no very early literature, 
the reminiscence is vivid, it may be ascribed to the 
liveliness, impressibility, and poetic tone of their minds, 
which such an event as the Deluge was calculated to af- 
fect strongly, and to their comparative honesty, which 
led them to cherish in most cases the traditions uniting 
them with primitive times. 

III. The objections taken to the ethnology of Gen- 
esis are limited to two. It is allowed that a high anti- 
quity, and a great historical value, belong to the Toldoth 
Beni iSToah, or " Book of the generations of the sons of 
Koah," which forms the tenth chapter of the First Book 
of Moses. But it is maintained that in its present state 
this chapter is the work of a " compiler," who misunder- 
stood his materials, and that it requires correction from 
the better knowledge of the moderns. f The two mis- 
takes w^hich are especially charged on the document 
are — first, that, by making Canaan a son of Ham, it 
connects the Canaanites ethnically with the Egyptians, 
whereas they were an entirely distinct people, not Ham- 
ites, but Semites ; and secondly, that, by declaring Cush 
to have begotten Nimrod, it makes that conqueror and 
his kingdom Ethiopian, whereas they w^ere in reality 
Cosssean, and so Turanian or Scythic. In the latter case 
it is supposed that the '' compiler" was misled by a re- 
semblance of words ; in the former, that he misinter- 
preted a geographical fact ethnically. 

But the latest research tends to vindicate the ethnol- 

* " The evidence of the Egyptians," says Mr. Stuart Poole, " as to the 

primeval history of their race and country is extremely indefinite There 

is a very short and extremely obscure time of tradition, and at no great dis- 
tance from the earliest date at which it can be held to end we come upon the 
clear light of history in the days of the Pyramids. The indications are of a 
sudden change of seat, and the'settlement'in Egypt of a civilized race, which, 
either wishing to be believed autochthonous, or'having lost all ties that could 
keep up the traditions of its first dwelling-place, filled up the commencement 
of its history with materials drawn from mythology." (' Biblical Dictionary/ 
Vol. i. p. 507.) 

t Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 417. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 399 

ogy of Genesis in both the disputed cases. The sup- 
posed Semitic character of the Canaanites rests upon 
two grounds — first, their presumed identity with the 
Phoenicians, and secondly, the Semitic etymology of 
certain Canaanitish names — e.g. Melchisedek, Abime- 
lech, Adonibezek, Mamre, Eshcol, Kirjath-Arba, &c. 
This last argument is undoubtedly important, though it 
is far from decisive. For, firstly, language is not a cer- 
tain sign of race, since occasionally a nation has adopted 
a completely foreign tongue. Secondly, the names, as 
given in the Hebrew Scriptures, are perhaps not 
Canaanitish w^ords at all, but only the Semitic equiva- 
lents of the native (Hamitic) terms. Thirdly, the true 
stock of the Canaanites may have been Hamitic, ^-et 
even before the time of Abraham they may have re- 
ceived a Semitic infusion from the valley of the Eu- 
phrates; and Semitic names may thus have been intro- 
duced among them. As for the other argument, though 
it has great names in its favour, there is really very 
little to be said for it. Phoenicia, as a country, is dis- 
tinguishable from Canaan, in which it may,' perhaps, 
have been included, but of which it was at any rate 
only a part ; and the Phoenician people present in many 
resj^ects a strong and marked contrast to the Canaanites, 
so that there is great reason to believe that they w^ere 
an entirely different race."^ That their ethnic charac- 
ter was really Hamitic seems to be indicated by the 
Babylonian tradition in Eupolemus, f that Canaan was 
the grandfather of Cush and Mestraim (Mizraim). It 
is further evidenced by the names of various places in 
their country, as Baalbek, " the hotcse of Baal," wdiere 
hek is the Egyptian root found in Atarbechis, "the 

* See the writer's * Herodotus/ vol. iv. pp. 243-245, where the point is 
argued at length. " The Canaanites," it is noted, " are fierce and intractable 
warriors, rejoicing in the prancing steeds and chariots of iron, neither given 
to commerce nor to any of the arts of peace ; the Phoenicians are quiet and 
peaceable, a nation of traffickers, skilful in navigation and in the arts both 
useful and ornamental ; unwarlike except at sea, and wholly devoted to com- 
merce. Again, whereas between the real Canaanites and the Jews there was 
deadly and perpetual hostility, until the former were utterly rooted out and 
destroyed, the Jews and Phoenicians were on terms of perpetual amity, — an 
amity encouraged by the best princes, who would scarcely have contracted a 
friendship with the accursed race." 

t * Fragm. Hist. Gr.' vol. iii. p. 212. 



310 ^1^3 TO FAITH, rEssAYYI. 

house of Athor " — Marathus, wliicli seems to be Martu^ 
the Ilamitic term for "the West" — Beth-shan, which 
in Semitic was Beth-shemesh, " the house of the sun," 
&c. Finally, it is thought to be absolutely proved by 
the Hittite names, which occur abundantly in the As- 
syrian inscriptions, and which are found to be unmistak- 
ably of a Hamitic type and formation. 

The Cushite descent of the Babylonians has still 
more ample evidence in its favour. Linguistic research, 
harmonising in this instance at once with classical tradi- 
tion and with the Scriptural account, shows the early 
Babylonians to have been, not only Hamitic, but de- 
terminately of Cushite origin. ^ All the ancient Baby- 
lonian documents are in a dialect, the vocabulary of 
which has a closer connexion with the native languages 
af Abyssinia than with any other known form of speech. 
ISTor is this a mere coincidence. The evidence of monu- 
ments (Himyaric, Chaldean, and Susian) shows, that a 
homogeneous race was spread in very ancient times 
from the country upon the Upper Xile, along the 
southern coast of Arabia, to the shores of the Persian 
Gulf, and thence into Susiana, whence it probably 
passed, by way of Gedrosia, to India. M. Bunsen 
decides that " an Asiatic Kush (or Ethiopia) exists only 
in the imagination of Biblical interpreters, and is the 
child of their despair. " f But ancient lore and modern 
research are equally against this view. Homer knew 
the Ethiopians to be " divided, " and to dwell " towards 
the rising and the setting sun. " j^ Hesiod made Mem- 
non, the son of the Dawn, and the traditional founder 
of Susa, an Ethiopian king. § Pindar taught that this 
same Memnon brought an army of Ethiopians to the 
relief of Troy. || Herodotus was told of Asiatic Ethio- 
pians as contained within the Persian empire, and 
assigned them their place in the satrapies of Darius, ^ 
and in the army of Xerxes."^^ Ephorus gave all the 

* Sir H. Kawlinson, in the vsriter's 'Herodotus/ vol. i. p. 4A2, note: com- 
pare Kalisch, ' Comment, on Genesis,' p. 174, E. T. 
t ' Philosophy of Universal History,' vol. iii. p. 191. 
X * Odvssey,' i. 23, 24. § ' Theogonia,' 984, 985. 

U ' Nemea,' iii. 62, 63. 1[ Herod, iii. 94. ** Ibid. rii. 70. 



Essay yi.] THE PENTATEUCH. ^n 

filiores of the Erythrsean Sea, or Soutliern Ocean, to the 
Ethiopians;* and so, according to Strabo, did the 
ancient Greek writers generally, f The names Kissia, 
and Kosssea, Kusan, :j: and Kutch or Kooch, which 
have clung to portions of the south coast of Asia, from 
the time of Herodotus to the present day, confirm the 
classical belief — a belief which is further evidenced by 
the genealogists, who almost universally connect Belus, 
the mythic progenitor of the Babylonians, with ^gyp- 
tus and Libya. § Thus the Asiatic Ethiopia, which is 
mentioned more than once in Scripture, 1 is no guess 
or myth, but an established fact ; and to this Ethiopia 
it appears that both early Babylon and the neighbour- 
ing countries of Susiana and Southern Arabia belonged. 

The "Toldoth Beni I^oah," therefore, instead of 
proving incorrect on the two points where its accuracy 
has been most recently challenged, is found in regard 
to them singularly to accord with the latest results of 
philological and ethnological research.^ Indeed that 
document, which has been well called " the most 
authentic record that we possess for the affiliation of 
races," ** is continually receiving fresh illustration and 
confirmation from the progress of modern discovery, 
and is probably destined to become, as time goes on, a 
continually stronger evidence of the historic accuracy 
of Genesis. ^ 

lY. Of all the attempts made to invalidate the his- 
torical character of the Pentateuch, the boldest is that 
which, starting from an observation of the resemblance 
of the names given in the two genealogies of the Seth- 
ites and the Cainites,tf proceeds to argue that they are 

* Ap. Strab. i. 2, § 28. t Strab. i. 2, § 27. 

X Kusan was the name given to the country east of Kerman throughout 
the whole of the Sassanian period. 

§ Pherecyd. Fr. 40; Charax Perg. ap. Steph. Byz. s. roc. Atyvrrros; 
ApoUodor. ii. 1, § 4: Eupolemus ap. Alex. Polyhist. Fr. 3; Johann. Antio- 
chen. Fr. 6, § 15. 

II Gen. ii. 13 ; Ezek. xxxviii. 5. 

il In connexion with this subject Mr. R. S. Poole's articles on ' The Ca- 
naanites,' and ' Cush ' in Dr. Smith's ' Biblical Dictionary/ are recommended 
to the reader's attention. 

** Sir H. Rawlinson in the * Journal of the Asiatic Society,' vol. xv. p. 230. 

+t Gen. iv. 17-22 ; Gen. v. 3-32. 



312 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay YI. 

really representations of one and the same list, with 
variations in the order and in the orthography, which 
variations destroy the authority of both, and show that 
nothing has come down to ns but a document founded 
on "a misunderstanding of the earliest records.""^ "J^ot 
having one tradition, but two," we have, it is argued, 
in reality, " no historical account." We may, there- 
fore, suppose that neither list contains any actual 
genealogy at all. We may view the names as ideal or 
mythical, signilicative of notions, nations, or epochs ; 
and we may then construct a history of the Old World 
according to our fancy, with very little check indeed 
upon our faculty of invention. 

I's'ow the facts of the case are simply, that in the 
two genealogies, which differ both at the beginning and 
at the end, six consecutive names occur, of which two 
are identical, while the remaining four have more or 
less of resemblance. These names are Cain, Enoch, 
Irad, Mehujael, Methusael, and Lamech in the one list; 
Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and 
I^amech in the other. The names Enoch and Lamech 
(it will be seen) occur in both lists ; of the rest, Cain 
resembles Cainan ; Irad, Jared; Mehujael, Mahalaleel ; 
and Methusael, Methuselah. The resemblance, how- 
ever, is in the Hebrew scarcely so great as in the Au- 
thorized Yersion. Irad differs from Jared by an initial 
letter of peculiar importance, the Hebrew ain (:2), which 
had a strong guttui-al sound, and is rarely lost, f Maha- 
laleel differs from Mehujael by one entire element out 
of the two which make it up ; it is really no nearer to 
Mehujael than Theodosius to Theophilus, or Jeroboam 
to Jerubbaal. In Methusael, and Methuselah, again, 
the concluding element is different, there being prob- 
ably no connection between the sael or sha^eloi the 
one and the selaJi or shelach of the other. Further, 
there is a considerable difference in the order which 

* 'Egypt's Place,' vol. iv. p. 895. 

t In the LXX. the ain is represented by the Greek 7. There the two names 
scarcely retain any resemblance at all, being respectively lared ('lapeS) and 
Gaidad (rotSciS). The copies used by the LXX. evidently had T in the place 
of";. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 3 13 

the names hold in the two lists ; and of this difference 
no account has been even attempted. The second name 
in the Cainite list is the fourth in the list of the Seth- 
ites ; and conversely the fourth among the Cainites is a 
name resembling the second name among the Sethites. 
Hence, if we allow the names to correspond, we must 
say that the two lists agree in no single relationship, 
except only that of the last pair. Cain is the son of 
Adam and father of Enoch ; but Cainan is the son of 
Enos and father of Mahalaleel. Enoch the Cainite is 
the son of Cain and father of Irad ; but Enoch the 
Sethite is the son of Jared and father of Methuselah. 
Irad is son of Enoch and father of Mehujael ; but Jared 
is son of Mahalaleel and father of Enoch. Finally, 
Methnsael is son of Mehujael, but Methuselah of Enoch; 
and Lamech the Sethite is father of ISToah, bnt Lamech 
the Cainite, of Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-Cain. Altogeth- 
er, while the amount of resemblance in the two lists is 
certainly remarkable, the amount of diversity is such 
as very clearly to distinguish them from one another. 
"Where confusion was most likely to ensue — that is to 
say, in the cases of the two identical names of Enoch 
and Lamech — the narrative in one or the other list is 
fuller and more detailed than usual, apparently for the 
very purpose of guarding against the mistake of identi- 
fication. All, therefore, that can fairly be concluded 
is, that in the two families of the Sethites and the 
Cainites, as in the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, * 
similar appellations, and to some extent the same 
appellations, prevailed. It would seem that at first 
men were slow to invent new names, and either used 
the old names over again or modified them slightly. 
Thus we have Enos and Enoch, Adam and Adah, f 
Jahal, Jubal, and Tiibal-Qdhi, where no one suggests an 
identification. Probably names were considered of 
great importance, and the experiment of an entirely 
new name was not readily made. 

* Taking the five consecutive and contemporary monarchs of these two 
kingdoms, who follow upon Ahab and Jehoshaphat, we find three names 
common to the two lists, 

t The resemblance is less in the Hebrew, but still it is real. 
14 



314 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 

The mythical character of this same portion of the 
Biblical history has been further based upon certain 
supposed etymologies. Seth, we are informed, repre- 
sents, not a man, but God Himself, since Set 'or Sutekh 
was an old Oriental root for God, and Set or Suti con- 
tinued to be an Egyptian deity.* Enos is the same as 
Adam, since in Aramaic it means ^' man," as Adam 
does in Hebrew.f Neither are real names of persons, 
hut only ideal appellations for the first founder of our 
race. Enoch, '' the seer of God," represents a religious 
period intervening between the time of the marauder 
Cain, and that of the agricultural builder of cities Irad. J 
At the same time he is "the solar year," since the 
number of years which he is said to have lived coin- 
cides exactly with the number of days in that division 
of time.§ Cain and Irad are the respective type^ of 
the nomadic shepherd races and the agricultural dwell- 
ers in towns. The other patriarchs also represent 
epochs ; and Nahor, the grandfather of Abraham, is 
the first real Biblical man.|| 

It is clear that all history whatsoever may be made 
to evaporate under such treatment as this. If we may 
guess at etymologies, and then at once assume our 
guesses to be coincident with truth ; if we may regard 
all significant names as mythic, and the personages to 
whom they are assigned as ideal, there is no portion of 
the world's annals which may not with a very little in- 
genuity be transferred to the region of myth. A witty 
writer noted some ten years since the certainty that, if 
such views prevailed, a famous passage from the eccle- 
siastical history of our own time would be relegated by 
posterity to that shadowy region ; for how could it be 
doubted that such names as S'ewman, Wiseman, Mas- 
terman, Philpotts, Wilde, were " fictitious appellations 
invented by an allegorist, either to set forth certain 
qualities or attributes of certain persons whose true 
names were concealed, or to embody certain tendencies 

* Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 208. + Ibid. p. 385. 

t Ibid. p. 390. § Ibid. p. 389. 

1 Ibid. p. 409. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH, 3^5 

of the times, or represent certain party characteris- 
tics?"* Similarly it might be argued that Athenian 
history, from Draco to Pericles, is mythical — that Draco 
was intended to represent the bloody and cruel spirit 
of the old aristocracy, Cylon their crooked courses, 
Soloil the first establishment of a sole authority (for it 
would seem to be thought allowable to draw a deriva- 
tion from a cognate dialect), Pisistratus the usurpation 
in which a oMx^i jpersuaded an army to help him, Hip- 
pias, Hipparchus, and Thessalus, the time when, with the 
aid of Thessaly^ the cavalry service was first fully organ- 
ised, Isagoras the establishment of denwcracy^ Clisthe- 
nes the triumjph of 'physical strength^ Theraistocles the 
ascendancy of law, Aristides the completion of the lest 
forin of government, Pericles the age when Athens at- 
tained \\Qvfiill glory. Where names are significant, 
and their etymology is accurately known, it is generally 
easy to bend them into agreement even with the actual 
history of the time. How much more easy must it be, 
when their signification is unknown, to affix a meaning 
on plausible grounds which shall square with our his- 
torical fancies ! 

But, it is said, the histories of all other nations run 
up into myth. Can the Hebrews be a solitary excep- 
tion ? This is simply to ask : Can there be direct reve- 
lation at all ; or, in other words, can God or a Divine 
messenger speak to man face to face, as the prophets 
declare they were spoken to ? If He can, there is cer- 
tainly nothing to prevent the subject matter of His rev- 
elation from being historical. And the beginnings of 
human history might in this way be as well communi- 
cated as any other facts, past, present, or future. ISTor 
is it at all impossible that the true history may have 
been handed down in one line by an undefiled tradi- 
tion, while in all other lines it was corrupted. The 
laws which govern human action are general, not uni- 

* * Eclipse of Faith/ pp. 347, 348. The significance of two of the names 
belonging to this passage of our history gave occasion to the following coup- 
let, written by a living scholar at the time of the " Papal Aggression : — 
•' Cum Sapiente Pius nostras juravit in aras : 
Implus heu Sapiens insipieusque Pius 1" 



316 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VL 

versal ; and an exception is so mncli a matter of course 
that some regard it as " proving the rule." It is nn- 
philosophical to assume, merely on the analogy of other 
nations, that the Hebrew "beginoings" are mythic. 
At the least, they ought first to be formally com^pared 
with the "beginnings" of those other nations, and only 
pronounced mythic if found to resemble them. Such a 
comparison has not been made at all fully as yet ; and, 
if it were made, would exhibit the most striking diver- 
sity.* The " beginnings " of other races have an air of 
extravagance about them, a tone of quaintness and 
grotesqueness utterly alien from the " Origines" of the 
Hebrews. In the former gods have their heads cut off, 
or devour their children, or undergo marvellous trans- 
formations, or marry their mothers, or are fished up 
out of the sea by fishermen, or are otherwise set before 
us in ludicrous aspects, which take away all solemnity 
and seriousness from the narrative. How different 
from this is the simple and awful grandeur of Genesis ! 
What a deep and solemn earnestness greets us in the 
very first words ! What sustained seriousness do we 
find throughout ! How evident that we are on holy 
ground, in the hands of a writer who does not dare to 
jest or sport with things divine, who is no fanciful alle- 
gorizer, weaving quaint fables to delight us as he in- 
structs, but one who speaks as in the presence of God, 
with a simple reverent solemnity, incompatible with 
any conscious departure from literal truth ! It is im- 
possible to illustrate this subject to any large extent 
here ; but the reader may gain, from the two passages 
placed below in parallel columns, a tolerably fair notion 
of the extent to which the '' Origines" of other nations 
differ in tone from Genesis. 

AcCOmSTT OF THE OeEATIOX FEOM AOCOHN'T OF THE OeEATION FEOM 

BEEOsus.t Gexesis.J 

"In the beginning all was "In the beginning God cre- 
darkness and water, and therein ated the heaven and the earth. 

* M. Bunsen makes a rerj incomplete comparison in the fourth volume 
of his ' Egypt ' (pp. 864-375). He cannot, however, even proceed so far as he 
has gone without being struck with the diversity here spoken of. (See p. 374.) 

t Ap. Syncell. ' Chronograph.' vol. i. p. 53 ; compare Euseb. * Chron. Can.' 
1. 2; pp. 11, 12, ed. Mai. % C^en. i. 1-8; 24-27; ii. 7. 



Essay VI.] 



THE PENTATEUCH. 



317 



were generated monstrous ani- 
mals of strange and peculiar 
forms. There were men with 
two wings, and others even with 
four, and with two faces: and 
others with two heads, a man's 
and a woman's, on one body; 
and there were men with the 
heads and the horns of goats, 
and men with hoofs like horses, 
and some with the upper parts 
of a man joined to the lower 
parts of a horse, like centaurs; 
and there were bulls with hu- 
man heads, dogs with four 
bodies and with fishes' tails, 
men and horses with dogs' 
heads, &c., &c. A woman ruled 
them all, by name Omorka, 
which is the same as ' the sea.' 



*'And Belus appeared, and 
split the woman in twain ; and 
of the one half of her he made 
the heaven, and of the other 
half the earth; and the beasts 
that were in her he caused to 
perish. And he split the dark- 
ness, and divided the heaven 
and the earth asunder, and put 
the world in order; and the 
animals that could not bear the 
light perished. 



And the earth was without form 
and void ; and darkness was up- 
on the face of the deep. And 
the Spirit of God moved upon 
the face of the waters. 



"And God said, Let there 
be light; and there was light. 
And God saw the light that it 
was good ; and God divided the 
light from the darkness. And 
God called the light Day; and 
the darkness he called Night. 
And the evening and the morn- 
ing were the first day. 

" And God said. Let there be 
a firmament in the midst of the 
waters; and let it divide the 
waters from the waters. And 
God made the firmament, and 
divided the waters which were 
under the firmament from the 
waters which were above the 
firmament ; and it was so. And 
God called the firmament Heav- 
en. And the evening and the 
morning were the second day. 

"And God said, Let the earth 
bring forth the living creature 
after his kind, cattle and creep- 
ing thing and beast of the earth 
after his kind; and it was so. 
And God made the beast of the 
earth after his kind, and cattle 
after their kind, and everything 



318 ^J^S TO FAITH. [Essay VL 

that creepeth upon the earth af- 
ter his kind : and God saw that 
it was good. 
"Belus, upon this, seeing that "And God said, Let us make 
the earth was desolate, yet teem- man in our image, after our like- 
ing with productive power, com- ness ; and let them have domin- 
manded one of the gods to cut ion over the fish of the sea, and 
off his head, and to mix the over the fowl of the air, and 
blood, which flowed forth, w^ith over the cattle, and over all the 
earth, and form men therewith, earth, and over every creeping 
and beasts that could bear the thing that creepeth upon the 
light. So man was made, and earth. So God created man in 
was intelligent, being a partaker his own image ; in the im^age of 
of the Divine wisdom." God created "he him ; male and 

female created he them. 

"And the Lord God formed 
man of the dust of the ground, 
and breathed into his nostrils 
the breath of life. And man 
became a living soul." 

Y. The longevity of the Patriarchs appears to 
modern critics " at variance with all the laws of hu- 
man and animal organism," and therefore " as contra- 
ry to common sense as the notion of there being any 
real chronology in astronomical cycles of hundreds 
of thousands of years." * Men, we are told, cannot 
evei' have lived more than 150, or, at the most, 200 years ; 
and a document which assigns them lives of 300, 600, 
800, and even 900 years, miist be unhistorical, and is 
either, in respect of its numbers, worthless, or to be 
explained in some not very obvious way. This argu- 
ment is supposed to be drawn from physiology, another 
of the "infallible sciences," which are held to lay 
down laws, not only for our practical guidance at the 
present day, but for our intellectual belief as to the 
occurrences of all past ages. In truth, however, the 
science of physiology has not spoken on the point 
before us. Its problem has been, not what length of 
time it is possible for man ever to have lived, but how 
long it is possible for him now to live under the present 

* Bunsen, 'Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 391; compare "Winer, * Realworterbuch,' 
vol. ii. p. 207 ; Bauer, ' Hebr. Mythologie,' vol. i. p. 197 ; Bredow, ' Unter- 
suchungen,' vol. i. p. 1, &c.. 



EssatVL] the PENTATEUCH. 3I9 

circumstances of the earth, and in the present known 
condition of human bodies. And even this question it 
can only answer empirically. It finds the body to be 
a machine which wears out by use ; but it fails to 
discover any definite rate at which the process of wear- 
ing out must proceed. In this difiiculty, comparative 
physiology does not help it, for the law of longevity in 
the brute creation is capricious in the extreme. All 
the proposed standards of measurement — the period of 
gestation, the time occupied in growth, the size of the 
full-grown body — when applied to species severally, 
fail in certain instances. Physiology then can only 
say : These human bodies are mortal ; death is inevi- 
table ; and, so far as modern testimony goes, men do 
not seem now able to resist the tendency to decay be- 
yond the term of 150, or at the utmost 200 years. 
But the possible duration of life, when the species was 
but recently created, and had its vigour unimpaired by 
the taint of hereditary disease, is beyond the cog- 
nizance of physiological science, which, by the mouth 
of its most celebrated professors, declines to pronounce 
a positive judgment. The great Haller, when led to 
speak on the subject, declared the problem one which 
could not be solved, on account of the absence of sufti- 
cient data,* while Buffon accepted the Scriptural 
account, and thought he could see physical reasons 
why life should in the early ages have been so greatly 
extended, f 

It cannot, therefore, be said with truth that the 
longevity of the Patriarchs is " at variance w^ith all " 
— or indeed with any — " of the laws of human and 
animal organism." We do not know on what longevity 
depends ; we could not possibly tell a priori whether 
man, or any other animal, w^ould live one, ten, twenty, 
fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years. The w^hole 
question is one of fact, and so of evidence. Men now 
do not, except in very rare instances, exceed 100 years. 

* " Problema ob paucitatem datorum insolubile." (* Element. Physiolog.' 
viii. §21.) 

t * Histoire Naturelle de rHomme,' (Euvres, vol. ir. pp. 858-361. 



320 ^^'^^ TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 

"Was this ahvays so, or was it once different? The 
Bible answers this question for us very clearly and 
decidedly, showing ns that human life gradually de- 
clined, beginning with a term little short of a millen- 
nium, and by degrees contracting, till, in Moses' time, 
it had reached (aj^parently) its present limits — the 
days of man's age having become then '' threescore 
years and ten," and only a few, "by reason of 
strength," reaching to fourscore years.* Does other 
historical testimony really run counter to this, and 
render it even hard to believe ? or is it not the fact 
that all the evidence we have is in accordance with 
the Scriptural narrative, and strongly confirmatory of 
the statement that in the early ages human life was 
prolonged very much beyond its present term ? 

In the Hindoo accounts there are four ages of the . 
world. In the first, man was free from diseases, and 
attained to the age of 400 years ; in the second 
the term of life was reduced to 300 years ; in the 
third it became 200 ; and in the fourth 100. The 
Babylonian traditions gave to their early monarchs 
reigns of between two and three thousand years. The 
Greeks told of a time when men were children till they 
reached a hundred. f Pliny mentions a number of 
authors, according to whom men had lived 300, 500, 
600, and 800 years. :{: Josephus relates that the 
Egyptian, Phoenician, Babylonian, and Grecian his- 
torians united in declaring that there had been cases of 
persons living nearly 1000 years. § It seems to be 
quite certain that a very wide-spread tradition existed 
in the ancient world, to the effect that the term of 
human life had been greatly abbreviated since man's 
first appearance upon the earth. 

YI. The duration of the sojourn in Egypt, whether 
taken as 430 years, according to the apparent meaning 
of Ex. xii. 40, 41, or as 215 years, according to the 
traditional explanation of that passage, is thought to 
be unhistorical because of the impossibility (as it is 

* Ps. xc. 10. The title of this psalm is " a prayer of Moses, the man of 
God." f Hesiod, ' Op. et Dies,' 130, 131. 

X ' Hist. Nat.' vii. 48. § ' Ant. Jud.' i. 3. 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 321 

said) of a family of seventy persons having, even in 
the longer of the two periods, multiplied into two 
millions of souls. So strongly is this difficulty felt, 
that for a theologian not to perceive its force, is regard- 
ed as " one of the most melancholy signs of the times," 
reducing modern exegesis to a level with the absurd- 
ities of Eabbinical comment.* The chronology, it is 
argued, must of necessity require a very considerable 
expansion; and this it is proposed to give by sub- 
stituting for the 430 years of Moses and St. Paul, f 
1400, or (more exactly) 1427 years (!) as the real 
length of the interval between the going down of Jacob 
into Egypt and the Exodus under Moses. :j: But it is 
more easy to make a vague and general charge of ab- 
surdity against an adversary than to point out in what 
the absurdity with which he is taxed consists. § 'No one 
asserts it to be naturally probable that such a company 
as went down with Jacob into Egypt would in 215, or 
even in 430 years, have become a nation possessing 
600,000 fighting men. Orthodox commentators simply 
say that such an increase of numbers wsls possiUe even 
in the shortest of these terms. They note that Jacob 
brought into Egypt fifty-one grandsons, and that if, 
under the special blessing of God so repeatedly 
promised to Abraham, || his male descendants had con- 
tinued to increase at the same rate, they would long 
within the specified period have reached the required 
number. In point of fact, they would in the fifth 
generation have exceeded 850,000, and in the sixth 
have amounted to six millions.^ If God can bless 

* Bunsen, * Egypt/ vol. i. p. 179. + Gal. iii. 17. 

X Bunsen, 'Egypt/ vol. iv. pp. 492, 493. 

§ When M. Bunsen condescends to particularize, he falls himself into a 
remarkable error. Baumgarten had observed that, "if we dedyct from the 
70 souls who came into Egypt 14, viz. Jacob, his 12 sons, and Dinah, there 
remain 56 pair who produced children." M. Bunsen says this reminds him 
of Falstaff's mode of reckoning. But the reckoning is perfectly correct, since 
the " 56 pair" who remain consist of the 56 male grandchildren and great- 
grandchildren of Jacob (who, together with the 14 deducted, make up the 70 
souls), a?id their wives, who were additional to the 70. (See Gen. xlvi. 8-27.) 

II Gen. xii. 2 ; xiii. 16 ; xvii. 4-6 ; xxii. 17. 

^ The average increase of the males in the two generations had been more 
than sevenfold each generation. A sevenfold increase would have given 
867,157 males in the fifth generation, and 6,000^099 in the sixth. 
14* 



322 -^^S TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 

with increase, if fecundity and life are His gifts. He 
miglit, by making every marriage fruitful and every 
child grow up, raise, even with greater rapidity than 
the record declares to have been done, a family into a 
nation. At the same time, as we are bound not to 
exaggerate the Divine interference with the ordinary 
course of nature beyond what is actually stated or 
implied in Scripture, it ought to be borne in mind that 
we have no need to suppose the 600,000 fighting men 
who quitted Egypt, though they are all called Israel- 
ites, to have been all descendants of Jacob. The mem- 
bers of the Patriarch's family came down into Egypt 
with their households/^ What the size of the patri- 
archal households was, we may gather from that of 
Abraham, whose " trained servants born in his house " 
amounted to 31S.f ]N"or was this an exceptional case. 
Esau met Jacob on his return from Padan-aram with 
400 men, who were probably his servants, :j: and Jacob 
at the same meeting had such a number that he 
could divide them into two "bands," or "armies" 
(m'sn??). § It is not unlikely that the whole company 
which entered Egypt with Jacob amounted to above 
a thousand souls. || As all were circumcised,^ all 
would doubtless be considered Israelites ; and their 
descendants would be reckoned to the tribes of their 
masters. Again, we must remember that polygamy 
prevailed among the Hebrews; and that though po- 
lygamy, if a nation lives by itself, is not favourable 
to rapid increase, yet, if foreign wives can be obtained 
in any number,^* it is an institution by means of 
which population may be greatly augmented. A 
recent Shah of Persia is said to have left at his death 
nearly three thousand descendants ; and it is a well- 
known fact that one of- his sons had a body-guard of 

* Gen. xlv. 18 ; Ex. i. 1. f Gen. xiv. 14. 

X Gen. xxxii. 6. § Gen. xxxii. 7. 

II Kurtz thinks they must have consisted of " several thousands." ('Hist, 
of Old Covenant,' vol. ii. p. 149, E. T.) 

II Gen. xvii. 12. 

** The Israelites could probablv have obtained wives from the lower castes 
of the Egyptians ; also from the'Midianites (Ex. ii. 21), the Libyans, and 
others. 



EssatYI.] the PENTATEUCH. 223 

sixty grown men, who all called liim father.* Egypt, 
moreover, was a country where both men and animals 
are said to have been remarkably prolific ; f where, 
therefore, natural law would have tended in the same 
direction as the special action of Divine Providence at 
this time. These considerations do not indeed reduce 
the narrative within the category of ordinary occur- 
rences ; but they diminish considerably from its ex- 
traordinariness. They show that at any rate there is 
no need to extend the period of the sojourn beyond the 
430 years of the Hebrew text, unless we seek to de- 
prive the increase of that special and exceptional 
character which is markedly assigned to it by the 
sacred historian. :[: 

It is further maintained, that, even apart from the 
entire question of the rapid increase of the Israelites in 
Egypt, the Biblical number, 430, cannot be historical, 
because it is the exact double of the period immediate- 
ly preceding it, that, namely, between Abraham's en- 
trance into Canaan and Jacob's journey into Egypt. 
It is " repugnant," we are told, " to any sound critical 
view," to believe the one period to have really been ex- 
actly the double of the other.§ The nature and ground 
of the repugnancy are not stated ; but apparently the 
principle assumed must be, that numerical coincidences 
are in no case historical, and that where they occur we 
are justified in assuming that one or other of the two 
numbers is purely artificial — the invention of a writer 
not honest enough to admit his ignorance. But is this 
principle really sound ? Will there be no numerical 
coincidences in historical chronology? What, then, 
shall we say to the ready acceptance by the writer 
who takes this view, of a statement made by Manetho, 

* Sir H. Rawlinson in the writers ' Herodotus,' vol. i. p. 277. 

t Aristot. 'Hist. An.' vii. 4; Strab. xv. 1, § 22; Plin. ' H. N.' vii. 3; 
Senec. ' Qua^st. Nat.' iii. 25 ; Columell. * de Re Rust.' iii. 8. 

X " And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, 
and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty ; and the land was filled with 
them." (Ex. i. 7.) "But the more they afflicted them the more they multi- 
plied and grew; and they (i.e. the Egyptians) were grieved because of the 
people of Israel." (lb. verse 12 ; compare also verse 20.) 

§ Bunsen, ' Egypt's Place,' vol. i. p. 173. 



324 ^^^S ^^ FAITH. [Essay YI. 

that during a certain period of 151 years there reigned 
in different parts of Egypt two contemporary dynasties 
consisting of exactly forty-eight kings each ? Yet this 
is exhibited as part of a " clear historical picture " in 
the very same work which proclaims the belief in a 
less exact coincidence repugnant to all sound criti- 
cism.'-^ The truth is, that a certain number of these 
coincidences will be presented by the historical chro- 
nology of any nation. For instance, from the com- 
mencement of the Persian to the end of the Pelopcn- 
nesian war — a very marked period of Grecian History 
— was eighty-six years ; and from the end of the Pelo- 
ponnesian war to the termination of the struggle, be- 
tween Sparta and Thebes — the next marked period — 
was exactly half the time, or forty-three years. At 
Pome, from the beginning of the disturbances caused 
by the Gracchi to the first civil war between Sylla and 
Marius was forty-four years, and from the breaking out 
of this war to the death of Julius Csesar was likewise 
forty-four years. (It was also exactly forty-four years 
from the death of Julius Caesar to the reputed year of 
the birth of Christ.) In the Mohammedan Caliphate 
the family of Mohammed occupied the throne from b.c. 
632 to B.C. 661, or (inclusively) thirty years ; and the 
succeeding dynasty of the Ommiades held it from b.c. 
660 to B.C. 750, or just ninety years, thrice the time of 
their predecessors. Again, in the portion of Jewish 
history with respect to which there is no dispute, the 
length of the period of independence intervening be- 
tween the Syrian and the Roman servitudes is exactly 
equal to that of the servitude under Pome, w^hich 
began with Antipater and terminated with the de- 
struction of Jerusalem by Titus. f But it is needless 
to multiply instances. Common sense assures us that 
such accidental coincidences must occasionally take 
place ; and no chronology claiming to be historical is 
to be rejected on account of them, unless they are of 

* Bunsen, * Egypt,' toI. iv. p. 510. 

t Judas Maccabseus revolted b.c. 166. Antipater was made Procurator 
of JudiBa by Julius Cn^sar in b.c. 48. Jerusalem was destroyed a.d. 70. But 
166-48=118, and 48-l-70=118> 



Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 325 

more frequent occurrence in it tlian can be accounted 
for by the doctrine of chances. It is not pretended 
that they are frequent in the Pentateuch ; nor indeed 
in the whole of the five books of Moses is there any 
other instance of a recurring number that has given 
rise to any suspicion. 

18. It appears, then, from this whole review, that 
there is nothing in the history of the world, so far as it 
is yet known, that forms even a serious objection to 
the authenticity of the Pentateuch. Were w^e bound 
down to the numbers of the Hebrew text in regard to 
the period between the Flood and Abraham, we should, 
indeed, find ourselves in a difiiculty. Three hundred 
and seventy years would certainly not seem to be sufii- 
cient time for the peopling of the world, to the extent 
to which it appears to have been peopled in the days 
of Abraham, and for the formation of powerful and 
settled monarchies in Babylonia and Egypt. But the 
adoption of the Septuagint numbers for this period, 
which are on every ground preferable, brings the chro- 
nology into harmony at once with the condition of the 
world as shown to us in the account given in Scripture 
of the times of Abraham, and with the results obtain- 
able from the study, in a sober spirit, of profane his- 
tory. A thousand years is ample time for the occupa- 
tion of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, by a considera- 
ble population, for the formation of governments, the 
erection even of such buildings as the Pyramids, the 
advance of the arts generally to the condition found to 
exist in Egypt under the eighteenth dynasty, and for 
almost any amount of subdivision and variety in lan- 
guages. More time does not seem to be in any sense 
needed by the facts of history hitherto known to us. 
The world, generally, is in a primitive and simple con- 
dition at the time of the call of Abraham. Men are 
still chiefly nomades. Population seems sparse ; for 
Abraham and Lot find plenty of vacant land in Pales- 
tine, and the descendants of Abraham experience no 
difiiculty in overspreading several countries. Settled 
kingdoms appear nowhere, except in Egypt and in 



326 ^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay VL 

Babylonia ; and there the governments are of the sim- 
plest form. Art in Babylonia is in a poor and low 
condition, the implements used being chiefly of stone 
and flint. Yet Babylon is much superior to her neigh- 
bours, holds Assyria in subjection, and claims the 
second place in the history of the world. Her histori- 
cal beginnings reach back, at the utmost, to b.c. 2458, 
while those of Egypt are probably but a very little 
earlier. All other nations acknowledge themselves 
younger than these two, and have no traditions even 
of their existence much before b.c. 2000. The idea 
that the Biblical chronology is too narrow, that it 
cramps history, and needs to be set aside in favour of 
a scheme which puts 10,000 years between the Deluge 
and the birth of Christ, is not one which has grown 
upon men gradually through the general tenor of their 
inquiries into the antiquities of different nations. It is 
merely the dream of a single historical enthusiast, who, 
devoting himself to the history of one country, and pin- 
ning his faith on one author — whom after all he exag- 
gerates and misrepresents — has come to imagine that 
the additional time is required by the history of his 
favourite, and has then forced and strained the histo- 
ries of other countries, with which he has no special 
acquaintance, into a distant agreement with the chro- 
nological scheme formed upon the supposed necessities 
of a single kingdom and people. As for the further 
requirement of another 10,000 3^ears between the Del- 
uge and the creation of man, it rests upon linguistic 
phantasies of the most purely speculative character. 
The remainder of the historical objections to the au- 
thenticity of the Pentateuch, though sometimes ingen- 
ious, have in them nothing to alarm us. Profane his- 
tory is decidedly favourable to a Deluge extending to 
all races of men, and to the greater longevity of man 
in the earlier ages. Ethnological research tends con- 
tinually more and more to confirm, instead of shaking, 
the account given of the affiliation of nations in the 
tenth chapter of Genesis. The more accurately old 
myths are examined, the more evident does it become 



EbbatVL] the PENTATEUCH. 327 

that their tone and spirit are wholly different from the 
tone and spirit of Scripture. The Pentateuch has the 
air and manner of history ; the Jews have always re- 
garded it in that light ; and modern historical and 
geographical inquiries, whenever they afford an oppor- 
tunity of testing the accuracy of the narrative, are 
found to bear witness to its truth. Whatever may be 
the scientific difficulties in the way of a literal recep- 
tion of some portions, historical difficulties of any real 
magnitude there are none. Internally, the narrative is 
consistent with itself; externally, it is supported by all 
that has any claim to be considered sober earnest in 
the histories of other nations. The Christian world, 
which has reposed upon it for nearly 2000 years, as an 
authentic record of the earliest ages, is justified, by all 
the results of modern historical research, in still con- 
tinuing its confident trust. There is really not a pre- 
tence for saying that recent discoveries in the field of 
history, monumental or other, have made the accept- 
ance of the Mosaic narrative in its plain and literal 
sense any more difficult now than in the days of Bos- 
suet or Still ingfleet. 



ESSAY YII, 

INSPIRATION. 



COiTTENTS OF ESSAY YII. 



Inteodttctiok— All spiritual enlight- 
enment derived from the Divine 
Spirit; but is all derived in the 
same -way? 

A Divine and a human element in all 
inspiration — How co-existing? 

History of the question— Jewish opin- 
ions — Patristic opinions. 

Ko argument against a high view to 
be deduced from the patristic belief 
in the inspiration of others besides 
the Apostles. 

Middle ages— Mysticism. 

The Keformation favourable to a very 
high esteem of Holy Scripture, but 
favourable also to freedom of 
thought. 

Tendency of thought in Germany in 
thelSth century. 

Deism passed from England, through 
France, to Germany— Doctrine of 
the English Deists. 

Causes leading to the controversy on 
inspiration in the present day. 

English writers of the present centu- 
ry and their theories. 

Christian Evidence in a measure in- 
dependent of theories of inspiration. 

Definite theories not desirable. 

Objections to inspiration closely con- 
nected with objections to miracles. 

Origin of doubts about miracles. 

Miracles not improbable, if there be a 
spiritual world connected more or 
less closely with the phvsical world, 
and a Personal Euler of 'the world. 



16. If miracles ever should occur, we 

should most naturally expect them 
to be connected with some special 
communication of God's will to man. 



IT. 



18, 



The common course taken by philo- 
sophical scepticism. 



As to inspiration : we have first cer- 
tain phenomena in the Bible, prov- 
ing the existence of a human ele- 
ment—The manifestation of that 
haman element most valuable in the 
matter of evidence — We have next 
certain phenomena manifesting a 
Divine element. — (a) Prophecy — 
Question as to the existence of true 
predictive prophecy in the Old Tes- 
tament — Objection— Nihil in scripto 
quod non prius in Scriptore — Objec- 
tion replied to— Cases of Balaam 
and Caiaphas. — (b) Types. 

19. How far all this proves the special in- 

spiration of the Old Testament— Cole- 
ridge's view considered. 

20. Argument d fortiori for the inspira- 

tion of the New Testament — Mr. 
Maurice's question replied to. 

21. Mr. MorelPs theory of the intuitional 

consciousness considered. 

22. Latitude of opinion on some points 

may be allowable. 

23. The Scriptures an infallitle deposito- 

ry of religio'on truth. 

24. Question concerning physical science* 

25. Conclusion— Some trials of our faith 

ought not to stagger us — The proper 
condition of mind in the present 
day. 



INSPIRATION. 



1. As in the natural world wisdom and intelligence 
are among the signs of life in an intelligent being, so 
in the spiritual world a spiritual understanding follows 
on the possession of spiritual life. As the Divine 
Spirit gives life, so He inspires wisdom. Indeed all 
spiritual gifts How equally from the same Spirit. St. 
Paul says that *' there are diversities of gifts, but the 
same Spirit," who gives to one the word of wisdom, 
to another the word of knowledge, to another faith, to 
another miracles and gifts of healing, to another proph- 
ecy, to another divers kinds of tongues, to another the 
interpretation of tongues. So he describes the influ- 
ence of that one and the selfsame Spirit on the early 
disciples in the Church of Corinth. Are we to take 
this literally ? Are we to believe that, whilst some 
had spiritual wisdom and understanding — and that in 
larger or less degrees — others were enabled to work 
miracles, otliers to prophesy ; that whilst to some there 
was only the common understanding of spiritual truths 
and mysteries, such as an enlightened mind among our- 
selves could penetrate, to others there was given an in- 
fallible knowledge of future events or of Divine truths 
otherwise unknown to man? Or, on the other hand, 
shall we think no more than this — that the Holy 
Spirit, who is the inspirer of all wisdom, by regenerating 
the heart, purifying the soul, exalting the affections, 
and quickening the intuitions of the mind, gives to 
some men more than to others an insight into things 
heavenly, and so enables them in all times and in all 
ages of the Church to be exponents of the Divine will ? 
— that He reveals God and Christ in their inmost con- 



332 -^II^S TO FAITH. [EssatVII 

sciences, inspiring tliem with all liigli and hoTy thoughts, 
and that thus they can ntter things which would be deep 
mysteries to other men, and which are, indeed, the ora- 
cles of God? 

2. This is pretty much the question concerning in- 
spiration so much agitated now. When we come to 
consider it, there can be no doubt but that we must 
admit a human and a Divine element. There is the 
mind of the Prophet or Apostle to be enlightened, and 
the Holy Spirit, the inspirer or enlightener. The 
question will be, in what manner and in what propor- 
tion these two elements coexist. We may suppose the 
human mind perfectly passive, acting simply under a 
mechanical influence of the Holy Spirit, speaking or 
writing not its own thoughts or its own words, but 
only the thoughts and words of the Spirit of God. Or 
we may suppose the mind of the writer or speaker act- 
ing altogether freely, speaking entirely its own thoughts 
and words, but having derived from Divine communion 
and enlightenment a higher tone, having acquired 
a correcter judgment, and, from a deep spiritual in- 
sight, able to speak spiritual things such as the natural 
man receiveth not. These are the two extremes. The 
one is verbal inspiration, simple dictation, so that the 
lij^s of the Prophet and the pen of the Evangelist are 
but mechanical organs moved by the Spirit of God. 
The other is no more than an exaltation of the natural 
faculties by the influence of the same Spirit, such an 
exaltation as we must believe all wise and holy men to 
have received, an inspiration such as that by which a 
Hooker or a Butler wrot ethe works which bear their 
names. There are many intermediate steps between 
these two, but no one can exceed either of these ex- 
tremes and yet call himself a Christian. 

3. Many causes have brought this subject into 
controversy at present. It has, however, occupied the 
thoughts of thoughtful men, and has been debated 
and disputed on in earlier times ; and a rapid glance at 
the history of the question may be a help to giving it 
its true place, and perhaps to finding its true solution. 



Essay VIL] INSPIEATION. 333 

The reverence which the ancient Jews felt for the 
Jewish Scriptures, must have sprung from the highest 
theory of verbal inspiration. Their care to count 
every verse and letter in every book of -the Old Tes- 
tament, to retain every large or small letter, every 
letter above or below the line, their belief that a mys- 
tery lurked in every abnormal state of letter, jot, or 
tittle, cannot have resulted from any lower principle. 
Later Jews, like the Cabbalists or Maimonides, may 
have become Pantheists or Rationalists ; but the more 
ancient have left us the clearest proof that they esteemed 
the Scriptures as the express word of God Himself. 
The well-known tradition amongst the Alexandrian 
Jews concerning the verbal agreement of all the LXX. 
translators, though working in seventy separate cells, 
looks the same way. There is considerable reason to 
believe that the distinction between the different books 
of scripture — the Hagiographa being esteemed inferior 
to the Prophets, and the Prophets inferior to the law — 
was at least much magnified, if not wholly invented, 
by the later Jews. So far, however, as such a distinc- 
tion and such difference of estimation existed at all, so 
far we must perhaps believe that there was a notion of 
something like degrees of inspiration. 

The earlier Christian Fathers seem to have followed 
much the same course as their Jewish predecessors. 
Clemens Romanus calls the Holy Scriptures '' the true 
words of the Holy Ghost " (c. 45). 'No definite theory 
of inspiration would be likely to be propoimded ; but the 
general reverence for the words of Holy Writ, and the 
deep significance believed to exist underneath the 
letter, prove the belief in inspiration to have been very 
strong and universal. Justin Martyr, and his Jewish 
opponent, seem fully agreed in their appreciation of the 
Old Testament. " E"o Scripture can be opposed to any 
other Scripture" (' Dialog.' p. 289). Irenseus saw in 
our Lord's promise to his Apostles — " He that heareth 
you, heareth Me" (Luke x. 16) — an assurance of their 
infallibility in the Gospel. " After the Lord's resurrec- 
tion they were indued with the power of the Holy 



334 ^^^S ^^ FAITH. [Essay VII. 

Ghost, and had perfect knowledge of the truth. He, 
therefore, who despises their teaching despises Christ 
and God " (Iren. iii. 1). Still it may be fairlj said 
that Iren^ens, in his accounts of the composition of the 
Gospel, seems to combine a human element with the 
Divine. (See Iren. iii. 11.) 

Tertullian embraced the Montanist belief, that Di- 
vine communications were made to man by means of 
a condition of trance or ecstasy. In this trance the 
prophet w^as supposed to lose all sense, like a Pythoness 
under the influence of the Divine afflatus (c. Mardon. 
iv. 22). This was the highest kind of inspiration. 
Yet he seems to have thought that the Apostles were at 
times allowed to speak their own words, and not the 
words of God, as where St. Paul (1 Cor. vii. 12) says, 
" To the rest speak I, not the Lord " (' De Monogam.' 
c. 3). 

The Alexandrian Fathers, Clement and Origen, 
though adopting somewhat of the Keo-Platonic views of 
the soul, as receiving an enlightenment by communion 
with the Divine Logos, appear to have held firmly the 
infallibility of every word of Scripture ; and the Mys- 
tical sense which they attach to the history and the 
language of the Old Testament seems to point even to 
verbal inspiration. (See Lumper, ' Historia Theologico- 
critica,' vol. 9. c. 4. § iii. art. 2.) Origen was, however, 
the first great Biblical critic : few things have tended 
more than Biblical criticism to modify the theory of 
verbal inspiration : and this appeared even in the 
patristic ages and among some of the most illustrious 
of the patristic writers. The critical labours of Chry- 
sostom and Jerome, in the beginning of the fifth centu- 
ry, made them observe the apparent discrepancies in 
the account of the Evangelists, and other like difficul- 
ties in Holy Writ. Such observations led to a greater, 
appreciation of the human element in the composition 
of Scripture. St. Chrysostom could see that some 
slight variations in the different narratives of the same 
event were no cause for anxiety or unbelief, but rather 
a proof that the Evangelists were independent wit- 



Essay VIL] INSPIRATION. 335 

iiesses. And St. Jerome could discern in the "New 
Testament writers a dialect inferior to the purest Greek, 
and even at times a mixture of human passion in the 
language of the Apostles.* All this, however, these 
Fathers clearly held to be subjected and subordinate 
to the general Divine influence of the guiding and 
overruling Spirit. 

4. No argument against a high doctrine of inspi- 
ration, as held by the Fathers, can be fairly deduced 
from the fact that they were disposed to admit the 
inspiration of other writings besides the Canonical 
Scriptures. Many of them knew the Old Testament 
only in the Greek translation, and were inclined to 
pay the same reverence to that which may have been 
due only to the Hebrew original. The writings of 
Clement and Hernias were at first received as canonical, 
though more careful inquiry excluded them from the 
Canon of the 'New Testament. This may be an argu- 
ment against the critical accuracy of the Fathers, but 
is none against their belief in the inspiration of the 
Bible. Nor, again, are we warranted in thinking that 
they confounded natural enlightenment with spiritual 
inspiration, because some of them speak as if prophetic 
powers and supernatural illumination were vouchsafed 
to others besides the Apostles of Christ. There can 
be no question that the earlier Fathers believed in the 
continuation of the miraculous powers of the Apostolic 
age down to their own times, and hence they looked 
themselves for a special illumination from the Holy 
Ghost. Yet, even so, they distinguished carefully 
between the gift of infallibility in things spiritual 
vouchsafed to the writers of the New Testament, and 
the gift of Divine illumination to themselves and their 
own contemporaries.f 

* Neander, ' History of Doctrines,' i. 280. (Bohn.) 

t Ignatius claims for himself that he knew the doctrines which he taught, 
not from man, but from the testimony of the Spirit ('ad Philadelph.' 7) ; but 
then he clearly distinguishes between himself and the Apostles. '' I do not 
enjoin you as Peter and Paul ; they were Apostles, I a condemned man." 
C Ad. Eph.' 15.) And Tertullian, who took a peculiarly high view of the 
Diviue illumination of the true Christian, says distinctly that "all the faithful 
have the Spirit of God, but all are not Apostles." " The Apostles have the 



336 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 

5. The Chiircli of the middle ages had, for the most 
part, a belief similar to that of the earlier Fathers. 
Yisions, and dreams, and sensible illuminations were 
still expected. Miraculous powers and Divine inspira- 
tion were still believed to reside in the Church ; but 
the Scriptures were not the less esteemed as specially, 
and in a sense distinct and peculiar, the lively oracles 
of God. Still the bold speculations of Abelard, in the 
twelfth century, reached the doctrine of inspiration as 
well as other deep questions of theology. The Prophets, 
as he taught, had sometimes the gift of prophecy and 
sometimes spoke from their own minds. The Apostles 
too were liable to error, as St. Peter on the question of 
circumcision, who was reproved by St. Paul.* Abe- 
lard's tendency was rationalistic. But here a very im- 
portant phenomenon, not confined to the middle ages, 
but very apparent then, deserves our careful attention. 
In all ages of the Church we find frequent tendencies 
to mysticism. The desire for a kind of ecstatic vision 
of things Divine, of abstraction from the external 
world, and an absorbed contemplation of the Deity, is 
natural to enthusiastic temperaments, and is not uncom- 
mon in times of dogmatic controversy. The state so 
sought after seems to offer a refuge from the strife of 
tongues, from the din and noise and uncharitableness 
of the world and the Church without. Those who have 
taken this line, indulged in this spirit, have, of- course, 
a firm belief in the communion of the Christian soul 
with the Spirit of God, and look for constant revelations 
from the Divine to the human intelligence. The mys- 
tic is transported out of self, and aims at frequent su- 
pernatural communion with God. To such a person 
the condition of the devout soul is a condition of con- 
stant inspiration. It is very true that the Holy Spirit 
is ever present with the Church, ever dwells in the 
souls of Christians, is our teacher and guide in all 
things, is ever ready to enlighten our understandings, as 

Holy Spirit in a peculiar sense." ('De Exhortatione Castitatis,' 4.) See 
Westcott, ' Introd. to the Gospels,' pp. 386, 400. 

* ' Sic et Non.' Ed. Hencke, p. 10. See Neander, ' Hist, of Doctrine,' 
vol. ii. p. 492. 



Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 337 

well as to convert our hearts. But tins truth of Scrip- 
ture, pressed to the extent of m^^sticism, breaks down 
the boundary between the inspiration of Prophets or 
Apostles, and the enlightenment of the Christian soul. 
The genuine mystic is himself in a state of the high- 
est inspiration. The intuitions of his spiiit enable him 
to see things invisible. High doctrine concerning the 
Church is favourable enough to such a view of things. 
Belief in the infallibility of the existing Church, in its 
miraculous powers, and in frequent revelations to the 
higher Saints, looked all this way. Again, it is well known 
how mysticism tended to Pantheism. Striving after 
absorption in God, men learned to identify their own 
minds, more or less, with Deity. The Divine Spirit was 
believed to dwell in all human souls, and needed only to 
be stirred up within them. The inclination to look 
wholly within, neglect of the objective, cultivation only 
of the subjective — all this too readily takes a panthe- 
istic direction. And so we find many sects of medieval 
mystics lapsing at length into pure Pantheism — a state 
of belief in which it is plain enough that anything like 
the Christian doctrine of the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures is impossible, as it cannot be distinguished from 
the illumination of any devout mind, or from the inspi- 
rations of genius. This is a thing of great importance 
to observe, as it shows itself in subsequent ages of 
Church History. M^^sticism and extreme spiritualism 
destroy any definite doctrine of the inspii-ation of Scrip- 
ture, and they very readily glide into Pantheism. 

6. The Reformation, of course, introduced much 
thought and controversy about Scripture. " The suffi- 
ciency of the Scriptures for salvation " became a Ref- 
ormation watchword : Scripture, the written word of 
God, — not the unwritten record of the Church, Tradi- 
tion. The natural inclination was to a very high es- 
teem of the Bible, as the definite deposit of Christian 
truth, in contradistinction to the indefiniteness of the 
traditions of the Church, and of that teaching of the 
Holy Spirit ever present with the Church, on which the 
Roman divines insisted. Nevertheless, the tendency 
15 



338 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIL 

of the Reformation was to boldness of thought and free- 
dom of inquiry. Erasmus, the great forerunner of Lu- 
ther, had from his critical investigations been led to a 
somewhat freer view of inspiration than had been com- 
mon before him. He thought it unnecessary to attrib- 
ute everything in the Apostles to miraculous teaching. 
Christ suffered the Apostles to err, and that too after the 
descent of the Paraclete, but not so as to endanger the 
faith.^ Even Luther, the great master mind of the 
age, with his strong subjective tendency, and with his 
indomitable boldness, ventured to subject the books of 
the E'ew Testament to the criterion of his own intuition. 
The teaching of St. Paul penetrated and convinced his 
soul ; St. James seemed to contradict St. Paul f and his 
Epistle was rejected as an Epistle of straw. There is 
reason to believe that he afterwards regretted and 
retracted; but words once spoken reach far and wide, 
and can never be unsaid again. 

7. The tendency of Calvin and the Calvinist reform- 
ers was less subjective and more scholastic than that 
of Luther and the Lutherans. Their distinct and defi- 
nite system of doctrine, like that of their forerunners 
Augustine and Aquinas, naturally found a place for 
the plenary and even verbal inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures, so that some of the Swiss Confessions speak of 
simple dictation by the Holy Ghost. The Remonstrants 
or Arminians, on the other hand, were more disposed 
to Rationalism than the generality of the reformed ; 
and writers, like Grotius and Episcopius, made clear' 
distinctions between the Divine and the human ele- 
ments in the writers of the Old and New Testaments.f 
The Socinians were, of course, the most rationalis- 
ing sect of those which early sprang from the Reforma- 
tion, a fungus-growth, rather than one of the natural 
branches. At first, however, they took the same view 

* Non est necesse ut quicquid fuit in Apostolis protinus ad miraculum 
vocemus. Passus est errare suos Christus, etiam post acceptum Paracletum, 
sed non usque ad fidei periculum. — Erasm. Epistt., lib. ii., torn. iv. AEdit. 
Basil. 

\ E. g. K Spiritu Sancto dictari Jiistorias non fuit opus. Satis fuit scrip- 
torem memoria valere. — Grotius, Vot. pro pace Eccles., torn. iii. p. 672. Lond. 
1679. 



Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 339 

as other Protestant writers of the authority of Holy 
"Writ, only they were less sensitive about difficulties 
and apparent discrepancies in Scripture, and more dis- 
posed to cut and square it so as to accord with what 
appeared to them to be reason and common sense. 
This tendency more and more fully developed itself. 
The modern Unitarian is a genuine Rationalist, often 
little different from a Deist. 

The mystical spirit, which had long been swelling 
up under the weight of the Medieval Church, some- 
times wholly within it, sometimes bursting forth from 
the pressure, showed itself in many places and many 
forms, after the triumph of the Reformation. Its ele- 
vation of the subjective over the objective, of the in- 
ward life over the outward letter, led insensibly to a 
disregard of the Bible in comparison with the internal 
testimony and the intuition of the soul. The Anabap- 
tists of Germany were of the coarsest class of mystics. 
Among the best have been the Quakers in this country. 
The leading principle of George Fox, their founder, 
was the doctrine of the Inward Light. This is the true 
principle of all knowledge of religion. The outward 
Word is chiefly valuable as it stirs up the Word within. 
The highest source of knowledge is this inward illu- 
mination. All outward forms, all outward tests, all 
creeds and confessions, are strictly forbidden. Even 
the Bible must be subordinated to the light of God 
within. It is evident that, on this principle, there can 
be no distinction between the inspiration of Prophets 
and Apostles and the inspiration of every devout soul. 
It is also observable how this theory produces results 
like those which spring from the Roman doctrine of 
tradition. The written Word of God is no longer the 
final court of appeal in controversies of doctrine. The 
Church of Rome finds an infallible interpreter in that 
Divine Spirit which ever dwells in and guides the 
Church. The mystic has an infallible interpreter in 
his own bosom, who not only opens his understanding 
that he may understand the Scriptures, but communi- 
cates directly and sensibly truth to the soul. It is also 



340 ^ID3 TO FAITH. [Essay YIL 

very deserving of remark, however painful it may be, 
that at one time the Quakers were rapidly hnrrying 
into Kationalism, and even Socinianism — the coldest 
forms of nnbelief — ^from the warm mysticism of their 
first founders. 

To come nearer to onr own tunes, the whole spirit 
of the last century in Germany was subjective. There 
seemed a reaction from the positive spirit of the seven- 
teenth century, which has been called the middle age 
of the Eeformation. Pietism was the form taken by 
the religious revival, a form which was eminently sub- 
jective, and whch partook much of the mystical. The 
philosophical spirit was of the same character. The 
very principle of iUuminism (auklarung) was, that there 
is in man's inmost consciousness an intuitional knowl- 
edge of truth. Its motto — " Wahr ist was klar ist," 
'' that is true which is clear," — sufficiently indicates 
its character. Proceeding from such a ground, and 
raising Natural Religion to the rank of a Eevelation, 
Tollner, the disciple of IVolff, reduced Scripture to the 
level of a natural light. "^ At the same time, the Pie- 
tists used the Bible, not so much to be the source of 
truth and the fountain of faith, as for a book of devo- 
tion and to raise pious emotion s.f In both ways there 
was- a move towards the confounding of the light of 
Is'atm'e with the light of Eevelation, of the light of the 
Spirit in the devout or illuminated soul with the light 
which had been specially vouchsafed to Prophets and 
Apostles for communicating God's truth to the world. 

8. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the 
Deism, which had been troubling England, had passed 
through the alembic of French scepticism, and now 
settled down in a shower of Eationalism on Germany. 
The Eationalism of Paulus, the Pantheism of Hegel, 
the historical myth of Strauss, derive their pedigree 
from the wi'itings of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Toland, 
Tindall, and other English Deists of the seventeenth 

* See Kahnis, ' Hist, of German Protestantism,' English Translation, by 
Mejer, p. 116. 

t lb., pp. 100, 116. 



Essay VII.] INSPIEATION. 34I 

and early eigliteenth centuries, througli the school of 
Rousseau and Yoltaire."^ The special princi^^le of Lord 
Herbert and his followers, the Deists, was that there 
were several positive religions — Christianity, Judaism, 
Mohammedism, &c. In the main all these are the 
same. The general religion is at the bottom of all of 
them, i. e., the Religion of Nature, a religion founded 
in the natural perception of truth, the intuitional con- 
sciousness of the human mind. Positive religions may 
be very good for practical purposes ; but all that is 
positive in them is evil, or at the best worthless ; the 
valuable part being that which they hold in common 
of the general religion. It was this principle wdiich 
passed through the various forms of French infidelity, 
German Rationalism and Pantheism, and which has 
been brought back to us, as the highest result of mod- 
ern discoveries in science and mental philosophy. How 
it was calculated to act upon the theory of inspiration, 
and to unsettle it even with those wdio had not become 
either Rationalists or Deists, it is needless to remark. 
Where a shadow of infidelity is obscuring the light, 
many, who are not wholly under its darkness, will yet 
pass through the penumbra that surrounds it. Even 
the apologist in the last century, from the wish to take 
positions which were impregnable, surrendered, at least 
for argument's sake, the higher gi'ound of their forerun- 
ners in the faith. And, in the like manner, among the 
German divines, w^ho still held Christian and orthodox 
opinions, there was a tendency to depart from the 
higher doctrine of inspiration held by the Church and 
the Reformers ; to speak of degrees of inspiration, of 
fallibility in things earthly, of a Divine influence ele- 
vating the mental faculties of the sacred writers ; not 
simply to ascribe all to the direct teaching of the Spirit 
of6ocl.t _ Si 

9. Distinct theories of inspiration were in old times 
seldom propounded, even where some attention was 

* See Kahnis as above, p. 31, &c. McCaul's * Rationalism and Deistic In- 
fidelity,' passim. 

t See Kahnis, pp. 116, 117. 



342 ^^^S ^^ FAITH. [Essay VII. 

directed to the question. Definite controversies upon 
it scarcely arose. The present century has been rife 
in both ; and they have prevailed not a little among 
ourselves. Several causes have contributed to call them 
forth. First, and chiefly, the spread of rationalising 
speculations, and the consequent unsettling of faith.* 
Kext, the greater attention which has been paid to the 
criticism of the Bible, and especially of the Xew Testa- 
ment, has exposed to view some of the difficulties con- 
cerning the origin of the books of the Bible, concerning 
the historical accuracy of some statements, concerning 
the slight apparent variations in the testimony of the 
Evangelists. In ordinary historians these would puzzle 
no one. The strictest integrity is compatible with 
slight inaccuracy or divergence of testimony ; but if 
all was the work of God's Holy Spirit, speaking through 
human agents, the least discrepancy is formidable. 
Hence the human element has been thought more of 
among modern critics, and by some has been elevated 
above the Divine. Thirdly, the rapid discoveries of 
modern science have been supposed to contradict the 
records of the Old Testament Scriptures ; and, in order 
to account for such a contradiction, eflbrts have been 
made to interpret anew the words of Moses ; and, where 
these have proved unsatisfactory, many have more or 
less believed that the writers of the historical books 
were merely chroniclers of historical events or collec- 
tors of ancient records, the providence of God having 
watched over the preservation of such records, but the 
Spirit of God having in no sense dictated them. Still 
freer views have been propounded ; but this may suffice 
as the expression of the thoughts of serious men. 

10. One of the first among ourselves to put forth a 
bold theory of inspiration was Coleridge. His ' Con- 
fessions of an Enquiring Spirit' was indeed not pub- 

^ It is important to observe, that this was first in time as well as in im- 
portance. Dr. ilcCaul has shown clearly ( ' Rationalism and Deistic Infidel- 
ity') that the spread of unbelieving opinions in Germany was first, the 
criticism came afterwards. Faith in Revelation was shaken by Deism and 
Rationalism, and then the unfriendly criticism was brought to bear upon the 
records of Christianity. 



E83AT YIL] INSPIRATION. 3^3 

lisliecl till after his deatli ; but the tone of many former 
writings is much the same. In the posthumous work 
just mentioned he unfolds his theory pretty freely. Of 
the Bible he speaks as a library of infinite value, as 
that which must have a Divine Spirit in it, from its 
appeal to all the hidden springs of feeling in our hearts. 
'' In short," he writes, " whatever fi7ids me bears wit- 
ness that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit." (Let- 
ter i.) " In the Bible there is more that finds me than 
I have experienced in all other books put together; 
the words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my 
being; and whatever finds me brings with it an irre- 
sistible evidence of its having proceeded from the 
Holy Spirit." (Letter ii.) But then he protests against 
"the doctrine which requires me to believe that not 
only what finds me, but all that exists in the sacred 
volume, and which I am bound to find therein, was not 
only inspired by, that is, composed by men under the 
actuating influence of, the Holy Spirit, but likewise' 
dictated by an Infallible Intelligence ; that the writers, 
each and all, were divinely informed, as well as in- 
spired." The very essence of " this doctrine is this, 
that one and the same Intelligence is speaking in the 
unity of a person, which unity is no more broken by 
the diversity of the pipes through which it makes it- 
self audible, than is a tune by the diflPerent instruments 
on which it is played by a consummate musician equally 
perfect in all. One instrument may be more capacious 
than another, but as far as its compass extends, and in 
what it sounds forth, it will be true to the conception 
of the master." Such a doctrine, he conceives, must 
imply infallibility in physical science and in every- 
thing else as much as in faith, in things natural no 
less than in spiritual. He expresses a full belief 
" that the word of the Lord came to Samuel, to Isai- 
ah, to others, and that the words which gave utter- 
ance to the same are faithfully recorded." But for the 
recording he does not think that there was need of any 
supernatural working, except in such cases as those in 
which God not only utters certain express words to a 



344 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 

prophet, but also enjoins liim to record them. In the 
latter case he accepts them " as snpernatiirally com- 
municated and their recording as executed under special 
guidance." The arguments of Coleridge are calculated 
rather to pull down than to build up. He brings many 
reasons against a rigid mechanical theory, against a 
belief that the Bible is simply the voice of God's 
Holy Spirit uttered through different organs or instru- 
ments ; but he does not fix any limit, he does not say 
how far he admits Divine teaching or inspiration to ex- 
tend, nor does he apparently draw any line of distinc- 
tion between the inspiration of holy men of old and 
the spiritual and providential direction of enlightened 
men in every age and nation. 

Wherever Coleridge has trodden Mr. Maurice fol- 
lows him ; not that he is a servile imitator, but he is a 
zealous disciple, and one who generally outdoes his 
master. In his ' Theological Essays ' he begins to speak 
of the inspiration of poets and prophets among the 
Greeks ; he speaks again of the quickening and inform- 
ing spirit, to which all good men ascribe their own 
teaching and enlightenment; he quotes the language 
of our Liturgy as ascribing to "God's holy inspiration" 
the power of " thinking those things that be good ;" and 
then he asks the question, '' Ought we in our sermons 
to say, ' Brethren, we beseech you not to suppose the 
inspiration of Scripture to at all resemble that for which 
we have been praying ; they are generically and essen- 
tially unlike ; it is blasphemous to connect them in our 
minds ; the Church is very guilty for having suggested 
the association ? ' " Proceeding in this course he nat- 
urally arrives at the conclusion that all which is good 
and beautiful comes from the inspiration of the Spirit 
of God, and that the sacred words of Scripture came 
in the same manner from the same Spirit. (See Essay 
xiii.) In some of his writings, especially in his work 
on 'Sacrifices,' he appears to have carried his disbelief 
of a more special inspiration of Holy Scripture to a 
greater length than in his 'Theological Essays,' as 
where God's tempting of Abraham to slay his son is 



Essay VII.] INSPIEATION. 345 

attributed to a horrible thought coming over him and 
haunting him. 

A very able and interesting writer on the same side 
of the same subject is Mr. Morell in his 'Philosophy 
of Religion.' The work is one of considerable acute- 
ness and philosophical power. The writer's theory of 
inspiration is based on his theory of the human mind. 
The different powers of consciousness he classes thus : 

Powers of Consciousness . . to which correspond . . Emotions. 

1. The Sensational " " The Instincts. 

2. The Perceptive " " The Animal Passions. 

3. The Logical " " Relational Emotions. 

4. The Intuitional " " ^Esthetic, Moral, and 

Eeligious Emotions. 

IS^ow, the intuitional consciousness, he contends, is 
that which alone is properly susceptible of religious 
impressions and religious truths. Revelation he con- 
siders to involve an immediate intuition of Divine real- 
ities. All revelation implies an intelligible object pre- 
sented, and a given power of recipiency in the subject, 
which power is lodged in the intuitional consciousness. 
In distinguishing revelation and inspiration, he defines 
" revelation, in the Christian sense, as that act of the 
Divine power by which God presents the realities of 
the spiritual world immediately to the human mind, 
while inspiration denotes that especial influence wrought 
upon the faculties of the subject, by virtue of which he 
is able to grasp these realities in their perfect fulness 
and integrity" (p. 150). "God made a revelation of 
Himself to the world in Jesus Christ ; but it was the 
inspiration of the Apostles, which enabled them clearly 
to. discern it." 

Mr. Morell argues that " the canonicity of the 'New 
Testament Scriptures was decided upon solely on the 
ground of their presenting to the whole Church clear 
statements of Apostolical Christianity. The idea of 
their being written by any special command of God, 
or verbal dictation of the Spirit, was an idea altogether 
foreign to the primitive Christians" (p. 165). "The 
proper idea of inspiration, as applied to the Holy Scrip- 
tures, does not include either miraculous powers, verbal 
15* 



346 ^II>9 TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 

dictation, or any distinct commission from God." {lb.) 
On the contrary, it consists " in the impartation of clear 
intuitions of moral and spiritual truth to the mind by 
extraordinary means. According to this view of the 
case, inspiration, as cm internal 'phenomenon^ is per- 
fectly consistent with the natural laws of the human 
mind — it is a higher kind of potency, which every man 
to a certain degree possesses" (p. 166). This view, he 
thinks, "gives full consistency to the j;r6'^r^5m'6 char- 
acter of Scripture morality" (p. 167). "It gives a sat- 
isfactory explanation of the minor discrepancies to be 
found in the sacred writers" (p. 170), whether those 
discrepancies be between Scripture and science, or in 
statements of facts, or in reasoning. In every case in 
which the moral nature is highly purified, and so a 
harmony of the spiritual being with the mind of God 
produced, a removal of all outward disturbances from 
the heart, " What," he asks, " is to prevent or disturb 
the immediate intuition of Divine things? 'Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God' " (p. 186). 

It is clear that this theory makes great purity of 
heart, or high sanctification, equivalent to, or the un- 
failing instrument of, inspiration. If one man is a 
better Christian than another, and so has a purer heart, 
he must be more inspired than the other. Hence, if a 
man of modern times could be found of a higher re- 
ligious tone and character than an Apostle, he would 
have a higher intuition of Divine things, and therefore 
would know Christian truth more infallibly. Moreover, 
it appears that the value of the Scriptures consists, not 
in their proceeding from any direct command of God, 
or from any infallible guidance of His Spirit, but in 
their embodying the teaching and experience of men 
whose hearts were elevated, and so their understand- 
ings enlightened ; to this it being added, in the case of 
the Xew Testament, that the writers were such as were 
specially qualified to represent the Apostolical Church, 
and so to transmit its spirit and teaching to us. 

A writer of less ability, but more boldness, Mr. 
Mac Naught of Liverpool, has carried the same theory 



Essay YIL] INSPIKATION. 347 

to its furthest limits. He defines inspiration to be 
" that action of the Divine Spirit by which, apart from 
any idea of infallibility, all that is good in man, beast, 
or matter, is originated and sustained " (p. 136, Second 
Edition). He denies all distinction between genius and 
inspiration. He doubts not that "David, Solomon, Isa- 
iah, or Paul would have spoken of everything, which 
may with propriety be called a work of genius, or of 
cleverness, or of holiness," as " works of the Spirit of 
God, written by Divine inspiration" (p. 132). 

11. The historical sketch thus rapidly given seems 
to show that there have always been some slight differ- 
ences of tone and opinion touching this important ques- 
tion, but that these differences have never so markedly 
come out as in the nineteenth century. The subject at 
present causes great anxiety, and not without reason. 
Many feel that, if they must give up a high doctrine of 
inspiration, they give np Christianity ; and yet they 
think that a high doctrine is scarcely tenable. Such a 
feeling is not unnatural, and yet it is not wholly true. 
All the history, and even all the great doctrines of the 
Gospel, might be capable of proof, and so deserving of 
credence, though we were obliged to adopt almost the 
lowest of the modern theories of inspiration. For in- 
stance, all, or almost all, the arguments of Butler, 
Paley, Lardner, and other like authors, are independ- 
ent of the question, " What is the nature and degree of 
Spiritual inspiration ? " Paley, for instance, undertakes 
to prove the truth of Christ's resurrection and of the 
Gospel history, and thence the truth of the doctrines 
which Christ taught to the world. But this he argues 
out, for the most part, on principles of common histori- 
cal evidence. He treats the Apostles as twelve com- 
mon men, of common honesty and common intelligence. 
If they could not have been deceived, and had no mo- 
tive to deceive the world, then surely we must accept 
their testimony as true. But if their testimony is true, 
Jesus Clu'ist must have lived, and taught, and worked 
miracles, and risen from the dead, and so in Him we 
have an accredited witness sent from God. His teach- 



348 ^^^* 'T^ PAITH. [Essay VIL 

ing, therefore, must liave been the truth ; and if we 
have good grounds for believing that His disciples 
carefully treasured up His teaching, and faithfully 
handed it on to us, we have then in the !N'ew Testa- 
ment an unquestionable record of the will and of the 
truth of God. Even if the Apostles and Evangelists 
had no special inspiration, yet, if we admit their care 
and fidelity, we may trust to their testimony, and so 
accept their teaching as true. 

So, then, even if we were driven to take the lowest 
view of inspiration, we are not bound to give up our faith. 
External evidence must almost of necessity begin by 
taking low ground. It must treat nothing as certain 
until it is proved. It must not, therefore, even pre- 
sume that witnesses are honest till it has found reason 
to think them so ; and, of course, it cannot treat them 
as inspired till it meets with something which compels 
an acknowledgment of their inspiration. This is 
taking the extremest case, one in which we altogether 
doubt the inspiration of the Apostles. A fortiori^ we 
need not throw away all faith, if we should be led to 
think that some books of the Old Testament are only 
historical records, collected by Jewish antiquarians, 
and bound up with the writings of prophets, as venera- 
ble and valuable memorials of the peculiar people of 
God. All this might be, and yet God may have spoken 
by holy men of old, and afterwards more fully by His 
Son. 

Some Christian controversialists, who take high 
groimd themselves, write as if they thought that Chris- 
tianity was not worth defending, unless it was defended 
exactly on their principles. The minds of the young 
more especially are sometimes greatly endangered by 
this means. The defender of the Gospel may be but an 
indifferent reasoner. He fails to make his ground sure 
and strong. His reader finds more forcible, at least 
more specious, arguments elsewhere. He thinks the 
advocate he rested on defeated, his arguments answered 
and upset, and Christianity itself seems lost, ^ow, we 
may surely begin by saying, that the question of inspi- 



Essay VII.] INSPIKATION. 349 

ration is, within certain limits, a question internal to 
Christianity. ]^o doubt, it may materially affect the 
evidences of Christianity ; but the questions of verbal 
inspiration, mechanical inspiration, dynamical inspira- 
tion, and the like, are all questions on which persons 
believing in the Gospel may differ. There is a degree 
of latitude which must be fatal to faith ; but within 
certain limits men may differ, and yet believe. We 
shall be wise to take safe ground ourselves, and to bear 
as charitably as we can with those who may take 
either higher or lower. Only it cannot be concealed 
that the temper of mind which disposes to a very low 
doctrine of inspiration is one that may not improbably 
lead in the end to the rejection of many religious truths 
— to scepticism, if not to unbelief. 

12. It seems pretty generally agreed among thought- 
ful men at present, that definite theories of inspiration 
are doubtful and dangerous. The existence of a human 
element, and the existence of a Divine element, are 
generally acknowledged ; but the exact relation of the 
one to the other it may be difficult to define. Yet some 
thoughts may aid us to an approximation to the truth, 
perhaps sufiiciently clear for practical purposes. 

13. In the first place, then, let us consider for a 
moment what is the real principle which seems to 
actuate those writers and thinkers, of the present day 
especially, who endeavour to root out all distinction 
between the inspiration of the Apostles and Prophets, 
and the ordinary illumination of good and wise men. 
Is it not that morbid shrinking from a belief in any- 
thing miraculous in religious history, now so commonly 
prevalent ? that fear to admit the possibility that the 
Creator of the universe should ever specially interfere 
with the universe which He has created ? There can 
be no question but that that inspiration of Holy Scrip- 
ture in which the Church has generally believed is of 
the nature of a miracle; and so its rejection follows 
upon the rejection of miracles in general. Many mar- 
vellous things exist in nature, things at least as marvel- 
lous as any miracles recorded in Scripture. It is mar- 



350 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIL 

vellous tliat the worlds should have come into being, 
and should all be under the government of the strictest 
laws and the most undeviating rules — that life should 
exist at all — that new life should be consta-ntlj burst- 
ing forth — that eyes should open curiously formed to 
see, and ears curiously constructed to hear ; — all this, 
and much beside, is as marvellous as the suspension of 
a natural law, as the restoring life to the body from 
which it had gone forth, as the giving sight to the blind, 
or hearing to the deaf. But the latter startles us into 
conviction that some living personal being of creative 
power has newl}^ put forth his strength ; the former 
state of things is so general, uniform, and constantly 
recurring, that we can go on as usual without much 
thinking of it, call it Mature, or perhaps Deity, or any 
other abstract generality, and so rest satisfied. 

14:. Without doubt we witness in the universe the 
constant prevalence of general laws, and the regulation 
of all things by them. In proportion to this general 
constancy is our natural expectation that it will con- 
tinue. And, moreover, even though we may be led to 
believe that the whole must have been framed, and that 
the laws must have been given by a creative intelli- 
gence ; still the uniform operation of those laws disposes 
us to doubt the probability that they will ever be in- 
terfered with by the hand that first ordered them. This 
doubt is strengthened by the belief that the wisdom, 
which first gave being to an universe, could never have 
wrought so imperfectly as that its active interference 
should afterwards be needed, to remedy defects or to 
repair tlie machinery. And all this might perhaps be 
probable enough, if we could see but a natural creation, 
and if there were no moral and rational creation too. 
But suppose it to be true, that there is in the physical 
universe, and more or less connected with matter and 
the laws of matter, a multitude of intelligent, rational, 
moral, and accountable beings; some more powerful 
than others ; some, the angels, wholly good ; some, the 
evil angels, wholly bad ; some of a mixed character, 
like man ; all capable, more or less, of communication 



VII.] INSPIRATION. 351 

with each other — those indeed of mixed character 
closely connected with tnatter, joined to material bodies, 
whilst the more powerful intelligences, good and evil, 
are freer and more independent of mere physical influ- 
ences : suppose, too, that there is one great Intellect, 
one Sovereign Mind, who made all, and who governs 
all ; with premises like these, where is the improbabil- 
ity that there should be occasional interferences with 
natural laws ? Life does not exist at all without pro- 
ducing some interference with the mere laws of matter 
and motion. Where intelligent beings exist capable 
of acting on material substances, they ever do mould 
those material substances to their will, and make the 
laws of nature serve them. If created intelligences 
superior to man have any power to act through material 
instruments, we should expect that they could only act, 
as man does, by taking advantage of the laws by which 
matter is guided, and so controlling one law by bring- 
ing a more powerful law to bear upon it. Even of the 
providence of the Supreme Being, if that providence 
be continually at work, controlling the moral and in- 
tellectual, and upholding the material creation, it is 
most probable that such providential agency would be 
exercised in overruling and directing natural causes 
and laws rather than in displacing or superseding them. 
But there certainly seems no d priori improbability 
that the Creator should be also the Ruler of the uni- 
verse ; that where the creation is moral and intelligent. 
He should rule and interfere as lie might not where 
it was simply material or animal ; that, where moral, 
personal beings were acting upon one another, striving 
to benefit, and striving to ruin one another, He too at 
times should be at hand, to punish or to protect. And 
so the doctrine of a special providence seems only con- 
sistent with the belief in a personal God. But the step 
from thence to a belief in miracles is no great stride. 
For, if the great personal Creator rules and guides and 
interferes in the affairs of His creation, though he would 
be likeliest to do so commonly by mere guidance of 
natural laws, yet, if there were need or occasion for it. 



352 ^^^S ^^ FAITH. [Essay VII. 

it must be quite as easy for Him to interfere by tbe en- 
tire suspension of those laws, or by a temporary altera- 
tion of them.^ 

15. Indeed it is hard to see how miracles should 
appear either impossible or improbable ; but either on 
the theory that what we see commonly we must see 
always, or else on the theory that there is no personal 
providence of God. And, in short, is it not true, that 
the natural tendency of those who try to get rid of 
miracle and special inspiration is to the resolving of 
providence into law, and of God into simple intelli- 
gence ? We are all well aware that we see the govern- 
ment of law, not only in the physical, but even in the 
intellectual world ; and there are those, who, from 
observing this, have been led to a belief in law, and 
nothing but law. God with them is but law; and 
providential or moral government gives place to mere 
necessity. Of course, this is simple Atheism, and in- 
volves all the difficulties, as well as all the miseries, of 
Atheism. And yet, surely it is more consistent and 
logical than the system, which does not deny the wis- 
dom that seems to have planned and still seems to 
order all things, but which yet shrinks from acknowl- 
edging the distinct, individual personality of the Crea- 
tor, His personal presence to all the universe which He 
has created. His superintending providence over it, and 
His active interference in it. tJnquestionably this latter 
is the doctrine of the Hebrew Bible, and that which 
Jesus Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount. But 
philosophic religion talks to us of a general principle of 
intelligence diffused throughout all things, moving, and 
breathing in, and animating all beings. IS'ow this 
general principle of intelligence sounds philosophical 
enough ; but how can it be reconciled with what Eng- 

* Of course, if Professor Baden Powell's theory be true, that the physical 
and the spiritual worlds are so separate that they can never come into con- 
tact, then all this is impossible. But then all creation is impossible. The 
spiritual could never have created the material. Indeed, the union of 
soul and body must be impossible; at all events, all religious knowledge must 
be impossible. It can be founded on no evidence, and can result only from 
certain convictions of the mind, wholly incapable of being tested as to their 
truth. 



Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 353 

lishraen call common sense ? What, on principles of 
common reason, can he meant hy inteUigence where 
there is no intellect, or a great principle of mind where 
there is no personal mind at all? We know what is 
meant by the intelligence of a man, or the intelligence 
of a beast — intelligence being the power of perceiving, 
understanding, and reasoning predicable of the mind 
of that man or that beast. In like manner we can 
nnderstand, that if there be one great infinite mind, 
then infinite intelligence may be predicable of that in- 
finite mind. But to say that there is any general prin- 
ciple of intelligence separable and distinguishable from 
any particular mind, is surely to palter with us in a 
double sense. We can no more appreciate intelligence 
as separated from the intellect of which it is a quality 
or attribute, than we can understand agency without 
an agent, potency without a power, sight without a 
seer, thought without a thinker, or life Avithout that 
which lives. In short, may we not demur altogether 
to mere abstractions, except as they may exist in the 
mind, or in systems of philosophy ? And so, is not the 
conclusion inevitable, that our real alternative lies be- 
tween a mere Stoical law, a Buddhist Kharma, blind 
and inexorable, working in matter, it is useless to in- 
quire whence or how — between this and a belief in a 
God, personal, present, Maker, Kuler, Guider of all 
things, and of all m.en ? 

16. Give us this, as the Bible gives Him to us: and 
though we should never expect Him to be perpetually 
setting aside the laws which He has made for the uni- 
verse, yet we need not — rather we cannot — believe, 
that He should be so 'inevitably fettered by them, as 
that He should not continually guide them for the good 
of His intelligent and moral creatures — guide them as 
in a less degree those creatures themselves can guide 
them, or that, when He may see fit. He should not 
suspend, or even for a season alter them. And if this 
latter contingency should ever take place, we should 
naturally expect that it would be never so probable as 
when it was His pleasure to communicate to rational 



354 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIL 

beings some special revelation of His will, and to teach 
them concerning Himself what thej might not be able 
to learn from mere natural phenomena. 

Can there be any inconsistency in snch a putting 
aside of the veil of nature, and giving man a somewhat 
clearer vision of God? Doubtless, other courses are 
possible. God might be pleased, instead of making 
any objective communications to mankind, to breathe 
silently into each individual spirit, and to teach sepa- 
rately each one of His will and of Himself. But no 
one has a right to say that such must be God's plan of 
action — that such only is consistent with Divine wis- 
dom, or human capacity, or philosophical theology. 
If God be not the mere pervading intelligence, which 
informs the universe, but which can exert itself only 
through the medium of things in the universe ; if, on 
the contrary. He is a personal, present ruler and guide, 
there can be no inconsistency in the belief that He may 
at times let Himself be heard by those who can hear 
Him — in other and clearer tones than the voices of 
mere natural phenomena, or even of the intuitional 
consciousness. 

17. ;N"ow, the common course which we see philo- 
sophic scepticism taking at present is this : First, there 
is a doubt about miracles, then about special inspira- 
tion. To build our faith in any degree on miracles is 
unwise. Inspiration is wholly a question of degree. 
One man has by the teaching or breathing of God's 
Spirit greater insight into spiritual truth than another. 
The Apostles, doubtless, had an unusual brightness of 
such vision, and so we may truly call their writings in- 
spired ; but the difference between their inspiration and 
that of St. Augustine, or even of Plato, is but a difference 
of degree. IsText comes a doubt or a denial of the ex- 
istence of personal spiritual beings. The devil, Satan, 
wicked spirits are but names for a general evil prin- 
ciple, which we cannot but see and feel influencing and 
pervading ourselves and all things around us. Angels 
are soon placed in the same category ; and the last step 
of all reduces God Himself to a principle of intelligencej 



Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 355 

if it does not go yet farther, and make Him but a 
law. 

But in all honesty^ is there a middle course ? Does 
not the Bible at all events — Old Testament and New- 
alike — speak of a present, personal God, of a multitude 
of personal spiritual beings — some good and others evil 
■ — working around us and within us, of miracles wrought 
b}^ teachers sent from God, of predictions uttered before 
the event, of holy men of old moved by the Spirit of 
God to speak things, wdiich could be known to none 
but God Himself? It is quite impossible to get rid of 
all this, and to retain the Bible as in any proper sense 
true. Let it be said, that good men who wrote books 
of the Bible were good men, but spoke according to 
the prejudices of their times. They believed in proph- 
ecies and miracles, and evil spirits, and so spoke of 
them. Their inspiration quickened their intuitions, 
but it did not make them infallible, and so in these 
matters they may have erred. But, if Christianity be 
Christianity, and not a system of mere morals and phi- 
losophy, there was One Man, w^ho was so much more 
than man, that if we disbelieve Him, we make God 
Himself a liar. And may we not ask, if His discourses 
be not so unfaithfully handed down to us that we 
might as well or better not have them at all, w^hether 
He did not perpetually appeal to miracles, whether He 
did not continually quote prophecies as fulfilled or 
soon to be fulfilled, whether He did not speak much of 
angels and devils, whether He did not in the most 
signal manner promise to His disciples the guidance 
and teaching of His Holy Spirit, to bring to their re- 
membrance all that He had said to them, and to lead 
them into all truth ? Is it possible to reject all this 
without rejecting Christ? 

18. And so much of miracles and inspiration gen- 
erally. ]S"ow let us take a few facts, and see what they 
seem to teach us. We have a *number of diff'erent 
books written in different styles, indicating the difi'erent 
characters of the writers. At times, too, there appear 
slight diversities of statements in trifiing matters of 



356 ^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay YIL 

detail. Here we mark a human element. If God 
spoke, it is plain that He spoke through man ; if God 
inspired, He inspired man. Even the Gospel miracles 
were often worked with some instrumental means ; no 
wonder, then, that when God would teach men. He 
would teach through human agencv. And the differ-, 
ence of style — perhaps the slight discrepancies in state- 
ments — seem to satisfy us that some portions at least of 
the Bible were not simply dictated by God to man ; 
there was not what is called mere mechanical or organic 
inspiration ; God did not simply speak God's words, 
using as a mere machine man's lips to speak them with. 
Of course, we must not forget the benefit we derive 
from these differences between writers of the same nar- 
rative. The apparent or trifling discrepancies in the 
statements of the different Evangelists, for instance, 
convince us that they were independent witnesses, and 
that the whole story did not arise from some well con- 
certed plan to deceive the world : the homely and even 
barbarous style of some of the writers proves to us that 
they were really fishermen, and not philosophers ; and 
so we have a convincing evidence that the deepest 
system of theology, and the noblest code of ethics ever 
propounded — the one stirring the depths of the whole 
human heart, the other guiding all human life — came, 
not from the profound speculations of the wisest of 
mankind, but either from God Himself, or else from a 
source more inexplicable and impossible ; from the 
poor, the narrow-minded, and the untaught. But whilst 
we see the benefit of all this, and admire the wisdom 
which so ordered it, we learn from it that there must 
have been a human element in Scripture; that God 
may, nay must, have spoken, but that he dealt his own 
common dealing with us — that is, He used earthly in- 
struments for giving heavenly blessings, human means 
for communicating Divine truth. 

]^ow, let us look the other way. Scripture is not a 
mere system of theology, nor is it a mere historical rec- 
ord. If it were either or both of these, and nothing 
more, of course we could believe that nothing might be 



Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 357 

needed, beyond the quickening of the intuitional con- 
sciousness, to enable men to conceive its truths and to 
communicate them to others. There is, however, as has 
been ah*eady noticed, a distinctly miraculous element in 
it ; and here, if we admit its existence, we cannot fail to 
see the w^orking of a present, personal God. Take away 
the miraculous element, and we may easily get into any 
kind of philosophical abstraction. Admit it, and we 
are brought back again into the intelligible region of 
common, plain sense. 

If anything in the world can be supernatural or mi- 
raculous, it surely must be the infallible foreknowledge 
of future events. 'No elevation of the intuitional con- 
sciousness can account for such foreknowledge. I^one 
can certainly foretell the future, but one who can cer- 
tainly guide the future. Do we, then, admit that any 
of the prophets in the Old Testament w^ere enabled to 
foretell coming events, the events of the Gospel history 
in particular? Some modern writers go so far as to 
deny this m toto. According to them every prophecy 
of the Old Testament concerned, primarily at least, con- 
temporaneous history, or history so nearly contempora- 
neous, that it required only common foresight and " old 
experience" to look into it. Burke early shadowed 
forth the French Revolution : Isaiah, on the same prin- 
ciple, could forewarn Israel of its dangers, threaten sin- 
ners with punishment, and promise protection to peni- 
tents. Of course, we can understand such a view ; but 
can we admit it and not reject Christianity? And let 
us remember that, in arguing on the nature of inspira- 
tion, we are not arguing in proof of Christianity ; but 
that, admitting the truth of Christianity, we are inquir- 
ing into somewhat which, as has been already observed, 
is really internal to Christianity. Most Christians are 
ready to believe that the passages of the Old Testament 
to which our Lord and his Apostles appealed, as proofs 
of His Divine mission and of the truth of their teaching, 
were really predictions, and not guesses. This is not 
the place to enter at length into such a question. But, 
if we just think of what Jacob said of Shiloh — Moses, 



358 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay YII. 

of a prophet like himself — David and others, of a great 
Son of David — Isaiah, in his ninth and hftv- third chap- 
ters, of a Child born, a Son given, called "Mighty God, 
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, and of a righteous Ser- 
vant, on whom the Loed should lav the iniquity of us 
all — Daniel, of Messiah the Prince'', cut off, but not for 
Himself, and of one like a Son of Man, to whom a king- 
dom is given by the Ancient of days, an everlasting 
kingdom, a dominion that shall not pass away — Hao-gai, 
of the glory of the second temple, so much surpassing 
that of the first — Malachi, of the forerunner of the Mes- 
siah — and many prophecies of like kind ; we shall feel 
that the burden of proof must lie with those who deny, 
not with those who believe, that there were prophets, 
who bore witness to the coming of the Christ centuries 
before His birth.^ We may remember that these pre- 
dictions have been preserved to us both in the original 
Hebrew, and in translations made from the Hebrew be- 
fore the birth of Christ, made, not by Christians, but by 
Jews — that the more ancient Jews did undeniably in- 
terpret these prophecies, as pointing forward to a prince 
who should be sent from heaven to save their own na- 
tion, and to bless other nations in them. Compara- 
tively modern Jews have explained some of these proph- 
ecies away, because they too manifestly favour the 
Christians; but even so, they continue to believe that 
the Scriptures foretold a Messiah. Moreover, we have 
the clearest testimonies from Jews and Gentiles alike 
(Jews and Gentiles who never became Christians, and 
so are independent witnesses) that in the East generally, 
Oriente toto^ and especially among the Israelites them- 
selves, there had prevailed an ancient and constant per- 
suasion that by Divine appointment a Deliverer was to 

* It matters little to this argument whether all the books of the Old Tes- 
tament were written by those whose names they bear ; whether, for instance, 
the last chapters of Is^aiah were Isaiah's or some other's ; whether the book 
of Daniel was written at the time of the captivity, or not collected till some 
centuries later. It is certain they were all written before Christ ; and if in 
them there be found prophecies of the Messiah, prophecies, be they many 
or few, like precious stones imbedded in a rock ; we have then the phenom- 
enon existing, and we have to explain how it came. Idoneum, opinor, 
testimonium diviaitatis Veritas divinationis. (Tert. Apolog. c. 20.) 



Essay VII.] INSPIEATION. 359 

arise out of Judea, who should have dominion; and, 
moreover, that he was impatiently expected in the 
reigns of the early emperors of Eome. Jews, who have 
lived since those times, have confessed that the period 
presignified is apparently past. Now, it is quite cer- 
tain that the most remarkable and most influential re- 
ligious teacher that ever lived in any nation upon earth 
did arise and live in Judea, at the time so marked and 
agreed on. It is undoubted that He declared the pre- 
dictions in question to have pointed to Him. His fol- 
lower^ have always claimed them as fulfilled in Him. 
Of all religious revolutions, nay, of all revolutions, 
moral, spiritual, social, or political, ever produced in 
the world. He has produced the greatest, the most in- 
fluential, the most extensive. As Christians, we, of 
course, believe that He was the Christ; and we are 
justified in urging on the Jews such considerations as 
the above, in proof that their own cherished Scriptures 
pointed to Him. 

ISTow, if the prophets really did centuries before 
foresee an event, most unlikely, but which we have 
witnessed as true, they must have had something more 
than the inspiration of genius, or than the exalting of 
their intuitional consciousness. For, whatever degree 
of insight into the truth of things spiritual we may at- 
tribute to such intuitional consciousness, and whatever 
communion it may give with the mind o^God, it can 
hardly be said to make us partakers of God's omnis- 
cience, or to endue us with His powers of foresight. 

One of the favourite modes of evading such conclu- 
sions as this, and so one of the favourite positions of the 
low inspirationists is, that NiMl in scripto quod non 
prius in scrijptore; a man can speak nothing but what 
he thinks. In a sense this is true enough; and, as a 
general rule, we may suppose the holy men of old, who 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, to have 
been first gifted with the knowledge of the future, and 
then moved to communicate that knowledge'to others. 
But still, if there be an overruling and over-guiding 
Providence as well as an informing and inspiring Spirit, 



360 ^^'^^ TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 

may not a man be guided to speak miconscionsly words 
of deep import ? We see this in the Old Testament in 
the case of Balaam. If the history of him be not a false 
legend or a mere myth, the Almighty told him that he 
was to speak to Balak that word which was put into his 
mouth. His will was quite the other way. He willed 
to curse Israel, and so to obtain from Balak the wages 
of unrighteousness ; but his own will y\' as overruled by 
the direct command of God. If Balaam prophesied, if 
he prophesied, as most Christians have believed, not 
only of the future fortunes of Israel, but of the future 
coming of Christ ; it is certain that his extraordinary 
knowledge could not have been the result of his purity 
of heart qualifying him to see God, could not have 
come from the clearing away of those clouds of sin, and 
therefore of error, w^hich darken the mental vision ; for 
his heart was set upon covetousness, and he perished 
with the enemies of God. The same, or much the same, 
may be said of Caiaphas, who was altogether bent on 
evil, and }- et of whom the Evangelist testifies that " be- 
ing High Priest that year he prophesied." If miracles 
are impossible, of course all this is impossible. But 
how miracles can be impossible, unless God is impossi- 
ble, it seems that we have yet to learn. 

Though, therefore, we may not generally look for a 
work of the Spirit through the mere bodily organs of 
men, without an elevation of their souls ; we surely 
have no power to limit the operations of God, or to say 
that He may not, if He will, use the very unconscious 
words of wicked men as well as the heart service of 
pious men. 

19. But farther, is it not true that Almighty God 
has made even acts and histories to prophesy, inde- 
pendently of any utterance of men's mouths? Are 
there not types in the Law, and through all the Old 
Testament history, which have their antitypes in the 
]^ew Testament ? There are those, no doubt, who will 
say that we can find historical parallels in profane, as 
readily as in sacred, history. But are these really to 
be compared with the sacrifice of Isaac typifying the 



Essay VIL] INSPIEATION. 361 

death and resurrection of Christ — with the history of 
Joseph, sold by his brethren, and then exalted to be 
their prince and saviour — with the brazen serpent, 
lifted up to heal all that looked on it — with the passage 
of the Red Sea, and other parables put forth by the 
history of the Exodus — with the priesthood of Aaron, 
the passover, the ceremonies on the day of atonement, 
and the many Levitical rites forepicturing Christ — 
with the kingly types, such as David and Solomon — . 
with the prophetic parallelism of Elijah and John the 
Baptist — and the man}^ others, too many to enumerate 
now ? * If there be, as the wTiters of the I^ew Testa- 
ment all assert, and as Christians have ever hitherto 
believed, a complete s^^stem of type and antitype in 
the Old and New Testament respectively ; to what can 
w^e attribute this, but to an overruling Hand guiding 
the fortunes of the chosen race, and of individuals in 
that race, and to the continual presence of that Holy 
Spirit who divideth to every man severally as He will ? 
Is not all this to be esteemed a special inspiration ? 
And if all this is in the Old Testament, then, whatever 
human elements there be in it, there is surely such a 
Divine element as to make its books emphatically the 
" Oracles of God," to which we may look as unmistak- 
ably embodying His will and word. We may admit 
that the word of God so embodied in the Scriptures 
was designed to communicate to us great moral and 
spiritual truths, that there was no purpose to give any 
revelation of physical science or of mere general his- 
tory. Yet if we have abundant evidence that Al- 
mighty God chose the prophets and the books of the 
Bible as channels for communicating His will to man- 
kind, we have surely abundant evidence that they 

* Professor Jowett thinks we must give up the types appealed to in the 
New Testament, just as we do not press the patristic appeal to the scarlet 
thread of Rahab, or the 318 followers of Abraham. That is to say, we must 
attach no more importance to the language of the Apostles, or of our blessed 
Lord Himself, than to the language of any Christian writer in the earlier 
days of Christianity. The New Testament has appealed to types of Christ 
in the Old Testament. The early Christians universally acknowledged such 
types, but perhaps unwisely found moreover certain fanciful resemblances 
unknown to the Apostles and Evangelists. Because the latter were fanciful, 
must we conclude that the former were false ? 
16 



362 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [EbbatVII. 

would not be permitted to err in things pertaining to 
God. It may not be proof that their language will 
not be popular, and so possibly inaccurate, in matters 
of science, or that their statements will be infallible in 
the matter of a date or in other things immaterial ; but 
it is surely proof enough that they would never be per- 
mitted to mislead us in questions of faith ; for other- 
wise they would bring us credentials to their faithful- 
ness from God Himself, and with these credentials in 
their hands, deceive, and mislead, and delude us. 

And here may we not see the fallacy of Coleridge's 
view, who accepts Scripture where it " finds " him, but 
not in its less interesting and merely historical records ? 
If we go on this principle, where are we to stop ? If 
we read the second book of Chronicles, perhaps we 
may discover very little which " finds " us ; whereas, 
if we read Baxter's ' Saint's Everlasting Rest,' it may 
" find " us in nearly every page. To carry out Cole- 
ridge's principle, we ought to uncanonize, or reject the 
inspiration of, the book of Chronicles, and set up as 
canonical the book of Baxter. But, if our former 
arguments be correct, and the general belief of Chris- 
tians in all ages be true, the whole historical record of 
the Old Testament is part of the great depository of 
God's revealed will. One part may be more important 
than another. But when we see that God spoke by 
words of man, and also by acts of man — that even 
actions were predictions — when we find Christ Him- 
self and His Apostles citing tlie books of the Old Testa- 
ment, as the " Scriptures," as the " Oracles of God," 
as " God-breathed " {©eoirvevcna) — surely we have no 
right to say that one part "finds me " and another does 
not, and to settle our own Canon accordingly. The 
whole collection of the books of the Old Testament 
comes to us with Divine credentials — prophecies in it 
fulfilled after they were uttered — Christ's attestation to 
them, that they all testified of Him — St. Paul's testi- 
mony to them that they were " given by inspiration of 
God " — and, having such Pivine credentials, we cannot 



Essay Vll.] INSriEATION. gg3 

suppose that any of these books would mislead us, at 
least in things heavenly. 

20. If all this holds of the Old Testament, it holds, 
a fortiori^ of the ISTew ; for probably no one will con- 
tend that the Apostles, with Christ's own mission, with 
the gift of tongues and miraculous powers, with the 
special promise of the Comforter and of guidance by 
Him into all truth, with the assurance of Christ's own 
presence, and with the command to preach on the 
house-tops what He had told them in the ear, — were 
in a worse position or more liable to error than the 
prophets of the Old Testament. And, though we may 
well believe that each individual Apostle, like every 
Christian man, may have grown in grace and in the 
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; yet 
this belief need in no wise interfere with our acknowl- 
edgment that messengers, specially accredited by God 
to man, would never be permitted to deliver a false 
message, or to mislead those whom they were so signal- 
ly commissioned to lead."^ 

For Mr. Maurice's question, as to whether we ought 
not to consider the inspiration of Holy Scripture like to 
that inspiration for which all of us pray, there seems 
but little difficulty in the reply. Undoubtedly, the 

* Revelation has all along been progressive, but not on that account self- 
contradictory. Abel offered the firstlings of his flock ; Abraham offered a 
ram instead of his son; Moses instituted the Paschal sacrifice; John the 
Baptist pointed to ** the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
world;" St. Paul spoke of " Christ our Passover;" St. Peter of "the pre- 
cious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." 
There is the same testimony here through a course of at least four thousand 
years ; but yet the knowledge was progressive. John the Baptist knew more 
of Christ than all that before him had been born of woman, but less than the 
least in the kingdom of the Saviour. What is true of the knowledge of the 
Church may be equally true of the knowledge of the Apostles. If they had 
not been capable of growth in wisdom, they would not have been human ; but 
no proof whatever has yet been given that the testimony of one Apostle is, 
on points of Christian doctrine, in conflict with the testimony of another, or 
that the more matured knowledge of any particular Apostle ever led him to 
contradict, in the least degree, his own former witness to the truth. Cer- 
tainly they themselves always appeal to the consistency of their own teaching, 
and denounce all teaching which is inconsistent with their own. " Though 
we or an angel from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that 
which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." (Gal. i, 8.) " If 
there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into 
your house, neither bid him God speed." (2 John 10.) 



364 -^1^9 TO FAITH. [Essay VII 

inspiration for which we pray is the same as the inspi- 
ration of the writers of Scripture — that is to say, it is 
the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit which guides not 
only into holiness, hut also into truth. Prohably pious 
men in general never begin any work of importance 
without praying for grace and guidance ; but when they 
do so, they do not expect to be answered with, for in- 
stance, the gift of tongues. They ask for the word of 
wisdom or the word of knowledge, not for the work- 
ing of miracles ; yet they look for it from one and 
the selfsame Spirit. And surely we may admit that 
that great Teacher of the Church may teach one in one 
way and another in another. It may be His will to 
give one a deep insight into spiritual mysteries, but yet 
not to give him a knowledge of future events. To an- 
other, at a particular period of the Church, or under a 
peculiar dispensation, he may give the power of proph- 
ecy, or the gift of tongues, or the working of miracles, 
or such guidance and direction as shall render his tes- 
timony, as to things heavenly, infallibly true. Are we 
to deny that God can do so ? Or again — is it impossi- 
ble for him to give such a knowledge except in the way 
of giving a higher degree of sanctification, purifying 
the soul from all tliat may darken the understanding, 
and so sharpening the spiritual insight ? Such a view 
of things is surely in direct opj^osition to the constant 
record of the Bible. If it be true, it must convict the 
writers of the books of the Bible of false testimony. Is 
it not clearly set down that Balaam — that " the m^an of 
God, who was disobedient to the word of the Lord " — 
that Jonah, who fled from God's presence — that Caia- 
phas, even when compassing Christ's crucifixion — were 
all empowered to speak of future things, and some of 
them sorely against their wills ? Although it is most 
likely that God would in general use sanctified instru- 
ments to speak to man of sacred things, yet, if the 
record of the Bible be true, there may be a revelation 
to the mind, and so through the mouths of men, which 
is not the result of high sanctification, of purifying the 
heart that it may see God. A man may have " the 



Essay VII.] INSPIEATION. 355 

gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all 
knowledge," may " speak with the tongues of men and 
angels," and yet lack charity and be nothing. 

21. And so, to pass to another view of the question, 
Mr. Moreli argues that the Divine or religious truth 
can only be revealed to our highest and deepest intui- 
tional consciousness. It is not to be received by the 
senses, by the understanding, or by the reason, but 
deeper down still in our inmost being. There is no 
reason to quarrel with this statement so far as it goes. 
Its fault is, that it is one-sided. " When it pleased God 
to reveal his son in " St. Paul, doubtless the revelation 
was not to the intellect only, but to the very heart of 
hearts. But there may be abundant head-knowledge 
without any such revelation to the soul and spirit. And 
must we not distinguish here between objective and 
subjective revelation? Of course objective revelation 
must suppose a subject ; that is to say, if an object is to 
be revealed, there must be a subject by which that ob- 
ject nTay be embraced and conceived. But is it not 
plain to common sense, setting aside all logical sub- 
tilty, that there may be an outward manifesting {<j>ave- 
pcoat^i if aTTOKokuy^L^ be ambiguous) of God to man, 
without any inward reception of Him to the soul ? And 
if so, may not a man be taught, as Daniel or St. John, 
by a vision of God, and yet, like Balaam or Jonah, not 
have his soul converted to God? He may "see the 
vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, and hav- 
ing his eyes open ; " and yet his heart may not be 
opened to know and to love God. It really seems as 
if Mr. Maurice, Mr. Moreli, and others of similar sen- 
timents, deny the possibility of this.* But on what 
principle can it be denied, except on a principle Avhich 
rejects all that is miraculous, and which makes God, 
not a Personal Being, but an impersonal influence ? 

* Of course, Professor Baden Powell must have held this impossible, be- 
cause he held that there was no contact point between the spiritual and the 
physical worlds. They lie, according to him, in two distinct planes, Avhich 
can never come in contact. But to what must such a theory lead short of 
Materialism and Atheism, in minds of the common stamp ? 



ggg AIDS TO FAITH. [Essat VIL 

22. But if we believe that God has in different ages 
authorized certain persons to communicate objective 
truth to mankind, if in the Old Testament history and 
the books of the prophets we find manifest indications 
of the Creator, it is then a secondary consideration, and 
a question on whicli we may safely agree to differ, 
whether or not every book of the Old Testament was 
written so completely under the dictation of God's Holy 
Spirit, that every word, not only doctrinal, but also 
historical or scientific, must be infallibly correct and 
true. The whole collection of the books has been pre- 
served providentially to the Church as the record of 
God's early dealings with mankind, and especially with 
one chosen race, as the collection of the prophecies and 
of the religious instruction which God was pleased to 
communicate to man in the preparatory dispensations 
of His grace : and with these there is a book of sacred 
psalmody, embodying the religious experience of men 
living under the Theocracy, some at least of the hymns 
contained in it evincing the power of prophecy in their 
writers. Whatever conclusion, then, may be arrived 
at as to the infallibility of the writers on matters of 
science or of history, still the whole collection of the 
books will be really the oracles of God, the Scriptures 
of God, the record and depository of God's supernatu- 
ral revelations in early times to man. And we may 
remember that our Blessed Lord quotes the Psalms as 
the Scripture, adding, " And the Scripture cannot be 
broken." 

23. It has been already observed that what holds 
good of the Old Testament holds a fortiori of the E'ew. 
If the writers of it were the accredited messengers from 
God to man, taught by Christ, assured by Him of the 
teaching of His Holy Spirit, sent to bring to man the 
knowledge of God and of His highest truths, we can- 
not doubt that that Spirit, who was to guide them into 
all truth, would never let them err in things pertaining 
to God. This is really what we want. We want to be 
assured that we have an infallible depository of relig- 
ious truth. And if we are satisfied that the Apostles 



Essay VII.] INSPIKATION. ^q>j 

were accredited messengers for delivering God's mes- 
sage and communicating God's truth to the world, 
clearly we have this assurance. It may, no doubt, be 
true that all ministers of Christ in all ages are God's 
accredited messengers ; but the difference is this : the 
Apostles had new truths to deliver direct from heaven ; 
other ministers of Christ have old truths to impress — 
truths which may perhaps be new to their hearers, but 
which are old to the Church. In the one case there is 
a direct commission with a need of infallibility in things 
spiritual ; in the other the mission is through the inter- 
vention of others, and with the power of correcting 
errors by appealing to the authority of the written 
record. 

If we can establish this much, then there seems no 
need to fear the admission of a human element, as well 
as a Divine, in Scripture. The Apostles had the treas- 
ure of the Gospel in earthen vessels. The Holy Spirit 
taught the Churches through the instrumentality of 
men of like passions with ourselves. The difficulty of 
enunciating a definite theory of inspiration consists ex- 
actly in this — in assigning the due weight respectively 
to the Divine and the human elements. A human ele- 
ment there clearly was. Though in instances like those 
of Balaam and Caiaphas we seem to have something 
more like organic inspiration, yet in ordinary cases 
God was pleased to take the nobler instruments of 
man's thoughts and heai'ts through which to communi- 
cate a knowledge of Himself to the world, rather than 
to act through the organs of speech, moving men's 
mouths as mere machines. With all the pains and 
ingenuity which have been bestowed upon the subject, 
no charge of error, even in matters of human knowl- 
edge, has ever yet been substantiated against any of 
the writers of Scripture. But, even if it had been 
otherwise, is it not conceivable that there might have 
been infallible Divine teaching in all things spiritual 
and heavenly, whilst on mere matters of history, or of 
daily life, Prophets and Evangelists might have been 
suffered to write as men ? Even if this were true, we 



368 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [EssatVII. 

need not be perplexed or disquieted, so we can be 
agreed that the Divine element was ever such as to 
secure the infallible truth of Scripture in all things 
Divine. 

24-. All this, of course, is applicable to questions of 
physical science. Scripture was not given to teach us 
science, but to teach us religion ; it may not have been 
needful that the inspired writers should have been ren- 
dered infallible in matters of science, nor is it at all 
likely that thej^ should have been directed to teach to 
the ancient world truths which would anticipate the 
discoveries either of E"ewton or of Cuvier. It would 
have been almost as strange if they had not used pop- 
ular expressions in writing on such subjects, as if they 
had written not in the tongue of their own people, but in 
a new dialect more refined and philosophical. But may 
we not ask, whether in this question of physical science, 
as in many like things, scej)tical writers have not been 
sharp-sighted on minute discrepancies, whilst they 
have been blind to the great general harmony of truth ? 
It is ever so ; each petty difference of date, each little 
inconsistency in two concurrent narratives, every, the 
slightest appearance of doubtful morality, anything like 
a supposed repugnance to what we consider the neces- 
sary attributes of the Most High, have been dwelt on 
and magnified, and used as objections to the inspiration 
of Holy Writ ; whilst the general truth of its historj^, 
the purity and holiness of its general moral teaching, 
the grandeur and sublimity of its doctrines concerning 
God, are altogether forgotten or concealed. Yet is it 
not true that, both in moral and in phj^sical science, 
nothing short of miraculous inspiration can account for 
the superior knowledge of the writers of the Old Testa- 
ment compared with the most enlightened sages of 
heathen antiquity? The Jewish philosophers, like 
Philo, felt that the Scriptures of their own prophets 
bad brought In simple language to their unlettered fel- 
low-countrymen moral and spiritual truths, after which 
the Platonists had been '' seeking, if haply they might 
feel after them and find them." Greeks, like Justin 



Essay VIL] INSPIRATION. 869 

Martyr, who had tried one school of philosophy after 
another, discovered in the Gospel all that was most 
valuable in the teaching of all schools. And may not 
we, who have come upon an age of rapid discovery in 
physical science, confess that the account given of the 
Creator and His w^orks in the Bible was an anticipation 
and is an epitome of all that has lately come to light ? 
The telescope has revealed to us worlds and systems of 
worlds rolling in unbroken order through infinity of 
space ; the microscope has shown us living and organ- 
ised beings so small as to bewilder the mind with their 
minuteness as the suns and planets bewilder it with 
their vastness; the geologist takes us back through 
countless ages, the records of which are indelibly en- 
graven " as with lead in the rock for ever." And the 
Bible, but no other ancient book that is written, had 
told us that the Being who created all things was such 
that the Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens could not 
contain Him, that He was the High and lofty One in- 
habiting eternity, but that though He had His dwelling 
so high, yet He humbled Himself to behold the things 
that are in heaven and earth, that a sparrow did not 
fall without Him, that the very hairs of man's head 
were numbered by Him. Infinite greatness, infinite 
minuteness, infinity of duration, infinity of action, eter- 
nity of past existence and of past operation, as well as 
an eternity of the future, are all distinctly predicated 
in the Scriptures of the mind of Him who made us all. 
And here for the first, time, now in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, we find the same infinity in heaven and in earth, 
and in the sea, and under the earth. 

Why, then, must we be puzzled because some re- 
cently discovered geological phenomena seem hard to 
reconcile with a few verses in one chapter of Genesis ? 
Are we to forget the marvellous harmony between 
God's word and His works, which a general view of 
both convinces us of, because there are some small 
fragments of both, w^iich we have not yet learned to fit 
into each other ? 'Nay ! even here, w^e mayfairly say, that 
the harmony already found is greater than the as yet 
16* 



370 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIL 

unexplained discord. For, putting aside all doubtful 
interpretations and difficult questions concerning the 
six days of creation and the like, these two facts are 
certain ; all sound criticism and all geological inquiry 
prove them alike ; viz., first, that the original creation 
of the universe was at a period indefinitely, if not infi- 
nitely, distant from the present time ; and secondly, 
that of all animated beings, the last that came into ex- 
istence was man. Geology has taught us both these 
facts ; but the first verse of Genesis clearly teaches the 
first, and the twenty-sixth verse teaches the second. 

To touch but for a moment on one other subject which 
Las been so strongly pressed of late, the uniform preva- 
lence of law, not only in things inanimate, but where 
there is life and even reason and morality — can any- 
thing be more consistent than this with the whole of 
the Old Testament ? Indeed its peculiar teaching from 
first to last ma}^ be said to have been that God is a God 
of order ; that He has impressed His law on all crea- 
tion ; that all things serve Him, all things obey Him ; 
that to break laws, whether moral or physical, is inev- 
itably to entail sufi'ering ; and that even rational and 
spiritual beings, even in their rational and spiritual 
natures and capacities, are subject to laws which can- 
not be broken ; that the sins of the fathers go down in 
sin and sorrow to the children ; and that even repent- 
ance, though it may save the soul, cannot undo the sin 
or avert the suffering. There is nowhere in creation or 
in history written more plainly the record of order and 
law. 

25. Surely such thoughts as these seem fit to satisfy 
us, that God's works rightly read are not likely to con- 
tradict God's word rightly interpreted. There will be 
for a time, perhaps for all time, apparent difficulties. 
When new questions arise, at first many will feel that 
it is hopeless to attempt to solve them. Some will 
despair, some will try to smother inquiry ; some will 
rush into Atheism, and others will fall back into super- 
stition. Patience is the proper temper for an age like 
our own, which is in many ways an age of transition. 



Essay VIL] INSPIKATION. 37I 

The disco\^enes of Galileo seemed more alarming to his 
contemporaries than any discoveries in geology or sta- 
tistics can seem to us. We see no difficulty in Galileo's 
discoveries now. Such things, then, are probably the 
proper trials of our faith. Sober views, patience, 
prayer, a life of godliness, and a good conscience, will, 
no doubt, keep us from making shipwreck of faith. 
"What now seems like a shadow may only be the proof 
that there is a light behind it. And even if at times 
there should come shadows seeming like deep night, 
we may hope that the dawn of the morning is but the 
nearer. 



ESSAY YIII. 

THE DEATH OF CHRIST 



CONTENTS OF ESSAY YIII. 



The Essay is addressed to those 
"vrho attacli some preternatural 
efficacy to the Eedeemers suffer 
ings for men, but propose to alter 
the terms in which it is usually 
conveyed 



—The Scripture doctrine . . . , 

1. In the thi-ee first Evangelists 

2. Especially the institution of 

the Last Supper . . . , 

3. In St. John's Gospel 
4 The Baptist 

5. The Apostolic teaching 

6. The Epistles in general 

7. Epistle of St. James 

8. Epistles of St. Peter 

9. Epistles of St. John 

10. Epistles of St. Paul 

11. Epistle to the Hebrews 

12. Harmony of Scripture upon 

the Atonement .. . 



376 
377 



381 
382 
383 
384 
385 
386 
337 
^83 

381 



XL— 1. The doctrine of Church 

•writers 391 



PAGE. 

2. Atonement often implied in 

another doctrine, in con- 
troversies 392 

3. "VVrong account by modern 

writers of patristic teaching 393 

4. Irenaeus 394 

5. Athanasius 396 

6. Other writers 398 

7. Anselm 400 

8. How far original 402 

9. " Sacrifice^' and " Satisfaction" 403 

10. Defects of Anselm's system 404 

11. Summary 405 

III.— 1. Modem repugnance to the 

doctrine 406 

2. Guilt caused by others and 

cured by another . . . . 406 

3. Sin revealed to us by its 

crowning act — the death of 

theLord 409 

4. The wrath of God . . . . 411 

5. Did Christ bear it? .. .. 412 

6. Conclusion 418 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 



Jesus, the Son of God, died on the Cross to redeem 
. mankind from sin and death. This is the truth which 
for eighteen centuries has been preached to Jew and 
Gentile ; the truth which the Apostles took in their 
mouths when they went to teach Christianity to nations 
who had never heard of Christ before. The doctrine 
of Reconciliation has not escaped the fate of other 
Christian truths : it has done and is doing its work in 
converting the world, and consoling many a crushed 
heart ; but at the same time the terms in which it 
should be set forth have been disputed, and sometimes 
the doctrine itself denied. Recent writers have dis- 
cussed the subject, avowing for the most part the wish 
to preserve the tenet itself ; but in some cases dealing 
so hardly with the evidence on which it rests, as to 
leave an impression that the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment is a modern invention, which can well be dis- 
pensed with in teaching Christianity ; and some even 
speak of it as a dishonour to God the Father, in that 
it represents Him as accepting the sufferings of the 
innocent foi the guilty. The present Essay is directed 
to those who profess to attach to the sufferings of the 
Redeemer some preternatural efficacy, beyond that of 
mere example, yet who would substitute for the re- 
ceived account of their effect some other doctrine. 
With those who utterly deny the doctrine of Atone- 
ment we have nothing here to do, except to wish them 
an increased consciousness of the need of a purgation 
from sin : for when Christ is needed, then, and not 
sooner, He will be found ; when man sees the serpent 
twining round his limbs, and feels serpent-poison beat- 



376 ^DS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

ing in his blood, and sees over all his beanty and glory 
the serpent's defiling trail, he will look to the Son of 
Man lifted up, and be healed. But the promise that 
the doctrine shall in spirit be preserved, but heightened 
and spiritualized, has much attraction for the inquiring. 
In approaching them with the key of a profounder 
gnosis, men profess to give to the well-worn pages of 
the Bible the freshness and originality which is all they 
need. And the attempt in this Essay will be to show 
that the doctrine of the Atonement, although a mys- 
tery, is made known to us in the Bible in certain strong 
and definite touches which allow of no mistake ; that 
this doctrine has been, in fact, continuously held and 
taught in the Church, altering from time to time in 
form, but in substance neither gaining anything nor 
losing anything ; and that the difficulties, which beset 
this as they do other mysteries, are not at all lightened 
by the remedies proposed on behalf of human reason, 
but rather increased. 

I. Much has been made of the supposed silence of 
our Lord as to the atoning virtue of His death ; and 
it has even been hinted that in this respect the words 
of Jesus are at variance mth those of His Apostles.* 
If these were so, the question would bear no discus- 
sion ; and much else would fall to the ground at the 
same time. The only proof of it which we are ofi'ered 
is, that Christ Himself ^ 'never uses the word sacrifice"! 
as applied to His own life or death. But this is a 
purely artificial test. It remains still to inquire what 
the Lord does say of that death ; for such is the co- 
piousness of language, that an act which has the nature 
of a sacrifice may be described without the use of that 
particular word. "When He speaks of " My blood of 
the new Covenant," no doubt the word sacrifice is dis- 
pensed with ; but there must be very few, we should 

* Professor Jowett on the Epistles, ii. 556. "In [the words of Christ] is 
contained the inner life of mankind and of the Church ; there too the indi- 
vidual beholds, as in a glass, the image of a goodness which is not of this 
world. To rank their authority helow that of the Apostles and Evangelists, 
is to give up the last hope of reuniting Christendom in itself, and of making 
Christianity an universal religion." 

t Ibid. 



ESSAY VIII.] THE DEATH OF CUEIST. ^ 3^7 

hope, who cannot discern in snch words the " sacrificial 
allusion." 

1. The three first Evangelists, as we know, agree 
in showing that Jesus unfolded His message to the 
disciples by degrees. He wrought the miracles that 
were to be the credentials of the Messiah ; He laid 
down the great principles of the Gospel morality until 
He had established in the minds of the Twelve the 
conviction that He was the Christ of God. Then as 
the clouds of gloom grew darker, and the malice of the 
Jews became more intense, He turned a new page in 
His teaching. Drawing from His disciples the confes- 
sion of their faith in Him as Christ, He then passed 
abruptly, so to speak, to the truth that remained to be 
learnt in the last few months of His ministry, that His 
work included suifering as well as teaching."^ He was 
instant in pressing this unpalatable doctrine home to 
His disciples, from this time to the end. Tour occa- 
sions when He prophesied His bitter death are on rec- 
ord, and they are probably only examples out of many 
more.f "We grant that in none of these places does the 
word sacrifice occur ; and that the mode of speaking is 
somewhat obscure, as addressed to minds unprepared, 
even then, to bear the full weight of a doctrine so re- 
pugnant to their hopes. But that He must {Bet) go and 
meet death ; that the powers of sin and of this world 
are let loose against Him for a time, so that He shall 
be betrayed to the Jews, rejected, delivered by them 
to the Gentiles, and by them mocked and scourged, 
crucified, and slain ; and that all this was done to 
achieve a foreseen work, and accomplish all things 
written of Him by the prophets — these we do certainly 
find. They invest the death of Jesus with a peculiar 
significance ; they set the mind inquiring what the 
meaning can be of this hard necessity that is laid on 
Him. For the answer we look to other places ; but at 
least there is here no contradiction to the doctrine of 
sacrifice, though the Lord does not yet say, " I bear 
the wrath of God against your sins in your stead ; I 

* Matt. xvi. 20, 21. + Matt. xvi. 21. 



378 ^1^9 TO FAITH. [EssatVIIL 

become a curse for yon." Of the two sides of this mys- 
terious doctrine, — that Jesns dies for lis willingly, and 
that He dies to bear a doom laid on Him as of neces- 
sity, because some one must bear it, — it is the latter 
side that is made prominent. In all the passages it 
pleases Jesus to speak not of His desire to die, but of 
the burden laid on Him, and the power given to others 
against Him. 

2. Had the doctrine been explained no further, 
there w^ould have been much to wait for. But the 
series of announcements in these passages leads up to 
one more definite and complete. It cannot be denied 
(we might almost say that before Mr. Jowett it never 
was denied) that the words of the institution of the Lord's 
Supper speak most distinctly of a sacrifice. "Drink 
ye all of this, for this is My blood of the new cov- 
enant," or, to follow St. Luke, " the new covenant in 
My blood." We are carried iDack by these words to 
the first covenant, to the altar with twelve pillars, and 
the burnt-offerings and peace-off'erings of oxen, and the 
blood of the victims sprinkled on the altar and on the 
people, and the words of Moses as he sprinkled it : 
" Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord 
hath made with you concerning all these words."* 'No 
interpreter has ever failed to draw from these passages 
the true meaning : " When My sacrifice is accom- 
plished, My blood shall be the sanction of the new cov- 
enant." The word sacrifice is wanting ; but sacrifice 
and nothing else is described. And the words are no 
mere figure used for illustration, and laid aside when 
they have served that turn, " Do this in remembrance 
of Me." They are the words in which the Church is 
to interpret the act of Jesus to the end of time. They 
are reproduced exactly by St. Paul.f Then, as now. 
Christians met together, and by a solemn act declared 
that they counted the blood of Jesus as a sacrifice 
wherein a new covenant was sealed ; and of the blood 
of that sacrifice they partook by faith, professing them- 

* Exod. xxiv. t 1 Cor. xi. 25. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHKIST. 3*79 

selves thereby willing to enter the covenant and be 
sprinkled with the blood. 

3. So far we have examined the three " synoptic" 
Gospels. They follow a historical order. In the early 
chapters of all three the doctrine of our Lord's sacrifice 
is not found, because He will first answer the question 
about Himself, " Who is this ? " before he shows them 
" What is his work ? " But at length the announce- 
ment is made, enforced, repeated ; until, when the feet 
of the betrayer are ready for their wicked errand, a 
command is given which secures that the death of 
Jesus shall be described for ever as a sacrifice and 
nothing else, sealing a new covenant, and carrying good 
to many. Lest the doctrine of Atonement should seem 
to be an afterthought, as indeed De Wette has tried to 
represent it, St. John preserves the conversation with 
Nicodemus, which took place early in the ministry ; 
and there, under the figure of the brazen serpent lifted 
up, the atoning virtue of the Lord's death is fully set 
forth. " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
ness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up ; that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have eternal life."^ As in this intercessory act, the 
image of the deadly, hateful, and accursed f reptile be- 
came by God's decree the means of health to all who 
looked on it earnestly, so does Jesus in the form of sin- 
ful man, of a deceiver of the people,:j: of Antichrist,§ of 
one accursed,! become the means of our salvation ; so 
that whoever fastens the earnest gaze of faith on Him 
shall not perish, but have eternal life. There is even 
a significance in the word tipi, which in older Hebl-ew 
meant to lift up in the widest' sense, but began in the 
Aramaic to have the restricted meaning of lifting up 
for punishment.^ With Christ the lifting up was a 
seeming disgrace, a true triumph and elevation. But 
the context in w^liich these verses occur is as important 

* John iii. 14, 15. t Gen. iii. 14, 15. 

X Matt, xxvii. 63. § Matt. xii. 24 : John xviii. 83. 

II Gal. iii. 13. 

if So Tholuck and Knapp, * Opuscula,' p. 217. The treatise of Knapp on 
this discourse is valuable throughout. 



380 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay YIIL 

as the verses themselves. ^Nicodemus comes as an in- 
quirer ; he is told that man must be born again, and 
then he is directed to the death of Jesns as the means 
of that regeneration. The earnest gaze of the wounded 
soul is to be the condition of its cure ; and that gaze 
is to be turned not to Jesus on the mountain, or in the 
temple, but on the Cross. This, then, is no passmg al- 
lusion, but it is the substance of the Christian teaching 
addressed to an earnest seeker after truth. 

Another passage claims a reverent attention — " If 
any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever, and 
the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will 
give for the life of the world. ""^ He is the bread ; and 
He will give the bread. f If His presence on earth 
were the expected food, it was given already ; but 
would he speak of "drinking His blood" (ver. 53), 
which can only refer to the dead ? It is on the Cross 
that He will afi'ord this food to His disciples. We 
grant that this whole passage has occasioned as much 
disputing among Christian commentators as it did 
among the Jews who heard it ; and for the same reason 
— for the hardness of the saying. But there stands the 
saying ; and no candid person can refuse to see a refer- 
ence in it to the death of Him that speaks. 

In that discourse, which has well been called the 
Prayer of Consecration ofi'ered by our High Priest, 
there is another passage which cannot be alleged as 
evidence to one who thinks that any word applied by 
Jesus to His disciples and Himself must bear in both 
cases precisely the same sense, but which is really per- 
tinent to this inquiry :-^" Sanctify them through Thy 
truth : Thy word is truth. As Thou hast sent Me into 
the world, even so have I also sent them into the 
world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they 
also might be sanctified through the truth.ij: The word 

* John vi. 51. 

f Some, omitting ^v iycb ddxra, Tvould read, "And my flesh is the bread 
that I will give for the life of the world." So TertuUian seems to have read 
"Panis quem ego dedero pro salute mundi caro mea est." The sense is the same 
with the omission ; but the received reading may be suceessfully defended. 

X John xviii. 17-19. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 38^ 

ayid^eiv^ " sanctify," " consecrate," is used in tlie Sep- 
tuagint for the oflering of sacrifice,* and for the dedi- 
cation of a man to the Divine service.f Here the 
present tense, " I consecrate," nsed in a discourse in 
which our Lord says He is ^' no more in the world," is 
conclusive against the interpretation " I dedicate My 
life to thee ;" for life is over. No self-dedication, 
except that by death, can now be spoken of as present. 
" I dedicate Myself to Thee, in My death, that these 
may be a people consecrated to Thee ;" such is the 
great thought in this sublime passage, which suits well 
with His other declaration, that the blood of His sacri- 
fice sprinkles them for a new covenant with God. To 
the great majority of expositors from Chr^^sostom and 
Cyril, the doctrine of reconciliation through the death 
of Jesus is asserted in these verses. 

The Redeemer has already described Himself as the 
Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep,J 
taking care to distinguish His death from that of one 
who dies against his will in striving to compass some 
other aim : " Therefore doth my Father love Me, be- 
cause I lay down My life that I might take it again. 
No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of My- 
self. I have power to lay it down, and I have power 
to take it again." 

Other passages that relate to His death will occur 
to the memory of any Bible reader. The corn of 
wheat that dies in the ground to bear much fruit,§ is 
explained by His own words elsewhere, where He says 
that He came "to minister, and to give His life as a 
ransom for many."|| 

4. Thus, then, speaks Jesus of Himself. What say 
His witnesses of Him ? " Behold the Lamb of God," 
says the Baptist, " which taketh away the sins of the 
world. "^ Commentators dififer about the allusions im- 
plied in that name. But take any one of their opinions, 
and a sacrifice is implied. Is it the Paschal lamb that 
is referred to ? Is it the lamb of the daily sacrifice ? 

* Levit. xxii. 2. + Numb. iii. 15. % John x. 11, 17, 18. 

§ John X. 24. I Matt. xx. 28. TJ John i. 29. 



382 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

Either Avay the death of the victim is brought before 
lis. But the allusion m all probability is to the well- 
known prophecy of Isaiah (liii.), to the Lamb brought 
to the slaughter, who bore our griefs and carried our 
sorrows.* 

5. The Apostles after the Kesurrection preach no 
moral system, but a belief in and love of Christ, the 
crucified and risen Lord, through whom, if they repent, 
men shall obtain salvation. This was Peter's preach- 
ing on the day of Pentecost ;f and he appealed boldly 
to the Prophets on the ground of an expectation of a 
suffering Messiah.:|: Philip traced out for the Eunuch, 
in that picture of suffering holiness in the well-known 
chapter of Isaiah, the lineaments of Jesus of Naza- 
reth. § The first sermon to a Gentile household pro- 
claimed Christ slain and risen, and added " that through 
His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive 
remission of sins." I Paul at Antioch preaches *' a 
Saviour Jesus ;"^ " through this Man is preached unto 
you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that be- 
lieve are justified from all things from which ye could 
not be justified by the law of Moses."** At Thessa- 
lonica all that we learn of this Apostle's preaching is 
'' that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again 
from the dead : and this Jesus, whom I preach unto 
you, is Christ."f f Before Agrippa he declared that he 
had preached always " that Christ should suffer, and 
that He should be the first that should rise from the 
dead;":j::j: and it was this declaration that convinced his 
royal hearer that he was a crazed fanatic. The ac- 
count of the first founding of the Church in the Acts 

* See this passage discussed fully in the notes of Meyer, Lange {Bilel- 
icerJce), and Alford. The reference to the Paschal Lamb'^finds favour with 
Grotius and others ; the reference to Isaiah is appi'oved by Chrysostom and 
many others. The taking avray of sin {a%p€i.v) of the Baptist, and the bear- 
ing it ((pepeiu, Sept.) of Isaiah, hare one meaning, and answer to the Hebrew- 
word NTSiS- To take the sins on himself is to remove them from the sinners ; 
and how can this be through his death except in the way of expiation by that 
death itself"? 

t Acts ii. X Acts iii. 18. 

§ Acts viii. ; Isai. liii. fl Acts x. 

II Acts xiii. 23. ** Acts xiii. 88, 39. 

it Acts xvii. 3. XX Acts xxvi. 23. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 333 

of the Apostles is concise and fragmentary ; and some- 
times we have hardly any means of judging what place 
the snlferings of Jesus held in the teaching of the Apos- 
tles ; but when we read that they " preached Jesus," 
or the like, it is only fair to infer from other passages 
that the Cross of Christ was never concealed, whether 
Jews, or Greeks, or barbarians were the listeners. 
And this very pertinacity shows how much weight 
they attached to the facts of the life of our Lord. 
They did not merely repeat in each new place the pure 
morality of Jesus as He uttered it in the Sermon on the 
Mount : of such lessons we have no record. They 
took in their hands, as the strongest weapon, the fact 
that a certain Jew crucified afar ofiT in Jerusalem was 
the Son of God, who had died to save men from their 
sins ; and they offered to all alike an interest, through 
faith, in the resurrection from the dead of this outcast 
of His own people. No wonder that Jews and Greeks, 
judging in their worldly way, thought this strain of 
preaching came of folly or madness, and turned from 
what they thought unmeaning jargon. 

6. We are able to complete from the Epistles our 
account of the teaching of the Apostles on the Doctrine 
of Atonement. " The Man Christ Jesas " is the media- 
tor between God and man, for in Him the human nature 
in its sinless purity is lifted up to the Divine, so that 
He, exempt from guilt, can plead for the guilty.* Thus 
He is the second Adam that shall redeem the sin of the 
first ; the interest of men are bound up in Him, since 
He has power to take them all into Himself. f This 
salvation was provided by the Father, to " reconcile us 
to Himself;":]: to whom the name of ''Saviour" thus 
belongs ;§ and our redemption is a signal proof of the 
love of God to us-l 'Not less is it a proof of the love 
of Jesus, since He freely lays down His life for us — 
ofiers it as a precious gift, capable of purchasing all 
the lost.*f But there is another side of the truth more 

* 1 Tim. ii. 5; 1 John. ii. 1, 2; Heb. vii. 25. 

t Eph. V. 29, SO; Rom. xii. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 22; Rom. v. 12, 17. 

X 2 Cor. V. 18. § Luke i. 47. || 1 John iv. 10. 

il 1 Tim. ii. 6; Tit. ii. 14; Eph. i. 7. Compare Matt. xx. 28. 



384 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

painful to onr natural reason. How came this exhibi- 
tion of Divine love to be needed ? Because wrath had 
already gone out against man. The clouds of God's 
anger gathered thick over the whole human race : thej 
discharged themselves on Jesus only. God has made 
Him to be sin for us who knew no sin." He is made 
" a curse " (a thing accursed) for us, that the curse that 
hangs over us may be removed. f He bore our sins in 
His own body on the tree.ij: There are those who 
would see on the page of the Bible only the sunshine 
of the Divine love ; but the muttering thunders of 
Divine wrath against sin are heard there also : and He 
who alone was no child of wrath, meets the shock of 
the thunderstorm, becomes a curse for us, and a vessel 
of wrath ; and the rays of love break out of that thun- 
der-gloom and shine on the bowed head of Him who 
hangs on the Cross, dead for our sins. 

We have spoken, and advisedly, as if the New 
Testament were, as to this doctrine, one book in har- 
mony with itself. That there are in the JN"ew Testa- 
ment different types of the one true doctrine, may be 
admitted without peril to the doctrine. The principal 
types are four in n amber. 

7. In the Epistle of James there is a remarkable 
absence of all explanations of the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment. But this admission does not amount to so m.uch 
as may at first appear. True, the key-note of the Epis- 
tle is that the Gospel is the Law made perfect, and that 
it is a practical moral system, in which man finds him- 
self free to keep the Divine law. But with him Christ 
is no mere lawgiver appointed to impart the Jewish 
system. He knows that Ehas is a man like himself ; 
but of the Person of Christ he speaks in a different 
spirit. He calls himself '' a servant of God and of the 
Lord Jesus Christ," who is " the Lord of Glory." He 
speaks of the Word of Truth, of which Jesus has been 
the utterer. He knows that faith in the Lord of Glory 
is inconsistent with time-serving and " respect of per- 

* 2 Cor. V. 21. + Gal. iii. 13. W Pet. ii. 24. 



KssayVIIL] the death OF CHEIST. 335 

sons."'' "There is one lawgiver," he says, "who is 
able to save and to destroy ; " f and this refers no doubt 
to Jesus, whose second coming he holds up as a motive 
to obedience. :j: These and like expressions remove this 
Epistle far out of the sphere of Ebionitish teaching. 
The inspired writer sees the Saviour, in the Father s 
glory, preparing to return to judge the quick and dead. 
He puts forth Christ as Prophet and King, for he makes 
Him teacher and judge of the world ; but the office of 
the Priest he does not dwell on. Far be it from us to 
say that he knows it not. Something must have taken 
place before he could treat them with confidence, as 
free creatures, able to resist temptations, and even to 
meet temptations with joy. He treats " your faith " as 
something founded already, not to be prepared by this 
epistle. § His purpose is a purely practical one. There 
is no intention to unfold a Christology, such as that 
which makes the Epistle to the Romans so valuable. 
Assuming that Jesus has manifested Himself, and 
begotten anew the human race, he seeks to make them 
pray with undivided hearts, and be considerate to the 
poor, and strive with lusts, for which they and not God 
are responsible ; and bridle their tongues, and show 
their fruits by their works. || 

8. In the teaching of St. Peter the doctrine of the 
Person of our Lord is connected strictly with that of 
His work as Saviour and Messiah. The frequent men- 
tion of His sufferings shows the prominent place he 
would give them ; and he puts forward as the ground 
of his own right to teach, that he was " a witness of the 
sufferings of Christ." *f The atoning virtue of those 
sufferings he dwells on with peculiar emphasis; and 
not less so on the purifying influence of the Atonement 
on the hearts of believers. He repeats again and again 
that Christ died for us ; ^'* that He bare our sins in His 

* James i. 1, ii. 1, i. 18. f James iv. 12. 

f James r. 7-9. § James i. 2, 3, 21. 

II See Neander, 'Pflanzung,' b. vi. c. 8; Schmid, 'Theologie der N. T.,' 
part ii. ; and Dorner, * Christologie,' vol. i. p. 95. 

1" 1 Pet. V. 1. ** 1 Pet. ii. 21, iii. 18, iv, 1. 

n 



386 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay YIIL 

own body on the tree. ^ He bare tliem ; and what 
does this phrase suggest, but the goat that " shall bear " 
the iniquities of the people off into the land that was 
not inhabited ? f or else the feeling the co7iseqiiences of 
sin, as the word is nsed elsewhere ? J "\Ve have to 
choose between the cognate ideas of sacrifice and sub- 
stitution. Closely connected with these statements are 
those which connect moral reformation with the death 
of Jesus. He bare our sins that we might live unto 
righteousness. His death is our life. AYe are not to 
be content with a self-satisfied contemplation of our 
redeemed state, but to live a life worthy of it. § In 
these passages the whole Gospel is contained ; we are 
justified by the death of Jesus, who bore our sins that 
we might be sanctified and renewed to a life of godli- 
ness. And from this Apostle we hear again the name 
of " the Lamb," as well as from John the Baptist ; and 
the passage of Isaiah comes back upon us with unmis- 
takable clearness. We are redeemed " with the pre- 
cious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and 
without spot." II Every word carries us back to the 
Old Testament and its sacrificial S3^stem : the spotless 
victim, the release from sin by its blood (elsewhere, i. 
2, by the sjprinkling of its blood), are here ; not the type 
and shadow, but the truth of them ; not a ceremonial 
purgation, but an effectual reconcilement of man and 
God. 

9. In the inspired writings of John we are struck at 
once with the emphatic statements as to the Divine 
and human natures of Christ. A right belief in the 
incarnation is the test of a Christian man ; \ we must 
believe that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, and that 
He is manifested to destroy the works of the devil. ** 
And, on the other hand, He who has come in the flesh 
is the One who alone has been in the bosom of the 

* 1 Pet. ii. 24. If there were anV doubt that " for us" {hiikp rj/j-wv) means 
" in our stead" (see verse 21), this" 24:th verse, which explains the former, 
would set it at rest. f Lev. xvi. 22. X Lev. xx. 17, 19. 

§ 1 Pet. ii. 21-25, iii. 15-18. 

fi 1 Pet. i. 18, 19, with Isaiah liii. 7. 

1[ 1 John iv. 2; John i. 14; 2 John 7. ** 1 John iii. 8. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 331^ 

Father, seen the things that human eyes have never 
seen, and has come to declare them nnto us. * This 
Person, at once divine and human, is " the propitiation 
for our sins," our " advocate with the Father," sent 
into the world " that w^e might live through him ; " and 
the means was His laying down His life for us, which 
should make us ready to lay down our lives for the 
brethren, f And the moral effect of His redemption 
is, that " the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from 
all sin." ^ The intimate connection betw^een His work 
and our holiness is the main subject of his first Epistle : 
" Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin." § 
As w^ith St. Peter so wdth St. John, every point of the 
doctrine of the Atonement comes out w^ith abundant 
clearness. The substitution of another who can bear 
our sins, for us who cannot ; the sufferings and death 
as the means of our redemption, our justification there- 
by, and our progress in holiness as the result of our 
justification. 

10. To follow out as fully in the more voluminous 
writings of St. Paul the passages that speak of our 
salvation would far transgress the limits of our space. 
Man, according to this Apostle, is a transgressor of the 
law. His conscience tells him that he cannot act up 
to that law w^iich, the same conscience admits, is divine, 
and binding upon him. Through the old dispensations 
man remained in this condition. Even the law of 
Moses could not justify him : it only by its strict 
behests held up a mirror to conscience that its frailness 
might be seen. Christ came, sent by the mercy of our 
Father w^ho had never forgotten us ; given to, not 
deserved by us. He came to reconcile men and God, 
by dying on the Cross for them and bearing their 
punishment in their stead. 1 He is " a propitiation 
through faith in his blood : " ^ words which most peo- 

* 1 John i. 2, iv. 14 ; John i. 14-18. 

+ 1 John ii. 1, 2, iv. 9, 10, v. 11-13, iii. 16, v. 6, i. 7 ; John xi. 51. 

X 1 John i. 7. § 1 John iii. 9. 

II 2 Cor. V. 14-21 ; Rom. v. 6-8. These two passages are decisive as to 
the fact of substitution ; they might be fortified with many others. 

T[ Rom. iii. 25, 26. Compare Levit. xvi. 15. 'lAaaTijpioy means "victim 
for expiation." 



388 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

pie will find Lmintelligible except in reference to the 
Old Testament and its sacrifices. He is the ransom, or 
price paid, for the redemption of man from all iniquity.* 
The wrath of God was against man ; but it did not fall' 
on man. God made His Son " to be sin for us " though 
He knew no sin ; and Jesus sufiered though men had 
sinned. By this act God and man were reconciled, f 
On the side of man trust and love and hope take the 
place of fear and of an evil conscience ; on the side of 
God, that terrible wrath of His, which is revealed from 
heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of 
men, is turned away, if The question w^hether we are 
reconciled to God only, or God is also reconciled to us, 
might be discussed on deep metaphysical grounds ; but 
we purposely leave that on one side at present, content 
to show that at all events the intention of God to punish 
man is averted by this " propitiation" and " reconcile- 
" ment." 

11. Different views are held about the authorship 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by modern critics. But 
its numerous points of contact with the other Epistles 
of St. Paul must be recognized. In both, the incom- 
pleteness of Judaism is dwelt on ; redemption from sin 
and guilt is what religion has to do for men, and this 
the law failed to secure. In both, reconciliation and 
forgiveness and a new moral power in the believers are 
the fruits of the work of Jesus. In the Epistle to the 
Romans, Paul shows that the Law failed to justify ; 
and that faith in 'the blood of Jesus must be the ground 
of justification. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the 
same result follows from an argument rather different : 
all that the Jewish system aimed to do is accomplished 
in Christ in a far more perfect manner. The Gospel 
has a better Priest, more effectual sacrifices, a more 
profound peace. In the one Epistle the Law seems set 
aside wholly for the system of faith ; in the other tlie 
Law is exalted and glorified in its Gospel shape. But 

* Titus ii. 14. Still stronger in 1 Tim. ii. 6, " ransom instead of" {apri- 
Kvrpov). Also Eph. i. 7 {airoXvrpwa-is) ; 1 Cor. v. 20, vii. 23. 
t Rom. V. 10; 2 Cor. v. 18-20; Eph. ii. 16; Col. i. 21. 
X Rom. i. 18, V. 9 ; 1 Thes. i, 10. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 389 

the aim is precisely the same, to show the weakness of 
the Law and the effectual fruit of the Gospel. 

12. We are now in a position to see how far the 
teaching of the New Testament on the eifects of the 
death of Jesus is continuous and consistent. Are the 
declarations of onr Lord about Himself the same as 
those of James and Peter, John and Paul ? and are 
those of the Apostles consistent with each other ? The 
several points of this mysterious transaction may be 
tlins roughly described : — 

1. God sent His Son into the world to redeem lost 
and ruined man from sin and death, and ' the Son will- 
ingly took npon Him the form of a servant for this 
purpose ; and thus the Father and the Son manifested 
their love for us. 

2. God the Father laid upon His Son the weight 
of the sins of the whole world, so that He bare in His 
own body the wrath which men must else have borne, 
because there was no other way of escape for them ; 
and thus the Atonement was a manifestation of Divine 
justice. 

3. Tlie effect of the Atonement thus wrought is, that 
man is placed in a new position, freed from the domin- 
ion of sin, and able to follow holiness ; and thus the 
doctrine of the Atonement ought to work in all the 
hearers a sense of love, of obedience, and of self-sac- 
rifice. 

In shorter words, the sacrifice of the death of Christ 
is a proof of Divine love and of Divine justice, and is 
for us a document of obedience. 

Of the four great writers of the ]^ew Testament, 
Peter, Paul, and John set forth every one of these 
points. Peter, the " witness of the sufferings of Christ," 
tells us that we are redeemed with the blood of Jesus, 
as of a lamb without blemish and without spot ; says 
that Christ bare our sins in His own body on the tree. 
If we " have tasted that the Lord is gracious,"^ we 
must not rest satisfied with a contemplation of our re- 
deemed state, but must live a life worthy of it. I^o 

* 1 Pet. ii. 3. 



390 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay YIII. 

one can well doubt, wlio reads the two Epistles, that 
the loA'e of God and Christ, and the justice of God, and 
the duties thereby laid on us, all have their value in 
them; but the. love is less dwelt on than the justice, 
whilst the most prominent idea of all is the moral and 
practical working of the Cross of Christ upon the lives 
of men. 

With St. John, again, all three points find place. 
That Jesus willingly laid down His life for us, and is 
an advocate with the Father ; that He is also the pro- 
pitiation, the suffering sacrifice for our sins ; and that 
the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin, for 
that whoever is born of God doth not commit sin ; all are 
put forward. The death of Christ is both justice and 
love, both a propitiation and an act of loving self-sur- 
render ; but the moral eftect upon us is more promi- 
nent even than these. 

. In the Epistles of Paul the three elements are all 
present. In such expressions as a ransom, a propitia- 
tion, who was " made sin for us," the wrath of God 
against sin, and the mode in which it was turned away, 
are presented to us. Yet not wrath alone. " The love 
of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, that 
if one died for all, then were all dead : and that He 
died for all, that they which live should not henceforth 
live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, 
and rose again. "^ Love in Him begets love in us, and 
in our reconciled state the holiness which we could not 
practise before becomes easy. 

The reasons for not finding from St. James similar 
evidence, we have spoken of already. 

ISTow in which of these points is there the semblance 
of contradiction between the Apostles and their Master ? 
In none of them. In the Gospels, as in the Epistles, 
Jesus is held up as the sacrifice and victim, quaffing a 
cup from which His human nature shrank, feeling in 
Him a sense of desolation such as we fail utterly to 
comprehend on a theory of human motives. Yet no 
one takes from Him His precious redeeming life ; He 

* 2 Cor. V. 14, 15. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 39I 

lays it down of Himself, out of His great love for men. 
But men are to deny themselves, and take up their 
cross and tread in His steps. They are His friends only 
if they keep His commands and follow His footsteps. 

H. We must consider it proved that these three 
points or moments are the doctrine of the whole New 
Testament. What is there about this teaching that 
has provoked in times past and present so much dispu- 
tation ? Not, I am persuaded, the hardness of the doc- 
trine, — for none of the theories put in its place are any 
easier, — but its want of logical completeness. Sketched 
out for us in a few broad lines, it tempts the fancy to 
fill it in and lend it colour ; and we do not always re- 
member that the hands that attempt this are trying to 
make a mystery into a theory, an infinite truth into a 
finite one, and to reduce the great things of God into 
the narrow limits of our little field of view. To wliom 
was the ransom paid ? What was Satan's share of the 
transaction ? How can one suffer for another ? How 
could the Redeemer be miserable w^hen He was con- 
scious that His work Avas one which could bring happi- 
ness to the whole human race ? Yet this condition of 
indefiniteness is one which is imposed on us in the re- 
ception of every mystery : prayer, the incarnation, the 
immortality of the soul, are all subjects that pass far 
beyond our range of thought. And here we see the 
wisdom of God in connecting so closely our redemp- 
tion with our reformation. If the object were to give 
us a complete theory of salvation, no doubt there would 
be in the Bible much to seek. The theory is gathered 
by fragments out of many an exhortation and warning ; 
nowhere does it stand out entire, and without logical 
flaw. But if we assume that the New Testament is 
written for the guidance of sinful hearts, we find a 
wonderful aptness for that particular end. Jesus is 
proclaimed as the solace of our fears, as the founder 
of our moral life, as the restorer of our lost relation 
with our Father. K He had a cross, there is a cross 
for us ; if He pleased not Himself, let us deny our- 



392 ^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay TIIL 



selves ; if He suffered for sin, let ns hate sin.* And 
the question onght not to be, What do all these mys- 
teries mean ? but, Ai'e these thonghts really such as 
will serve to guide our life and to assuage our terrors 
in the hom- of death ? The answer is twofold — one 
from history and one from experience. The preaching 
of the Cross of the Lord even in this simple fashion 
converted the world. The same doctrine is now the 
ground of any definite hope that we find in ourselves, 
of forgiveness of sins and of everlasting life. 

Now, in examining the history of the Doctrine we 
shall expect to find, as in the case of other doctrines, 
that attempts have been made to force .from Scripture 
a clearer and more definite statement than is found 
there at first sight. We should also expect that these 
attempts at greater precision had been accompanied 
often, if not always, with the loss of some element on 
which the Bible insists. 

But we are told at the outset that the position 
which this doctrine holds in the history of early con- 
troversies is far from being so prominent as that which 
we assign it now. The answer is, that in the first ages 
the disputes which prevailed about the Person of Jesus 
superseded the discussion of the Atonement, because 
they contained and implied it. More than once, when 
the ostensible argument was the nature of the Re- 
deemer, Athanasius insisted that if the Son of God had 
been such a one as Arians and Sabellians dreamed of, 
He could not have redeemed the world. How could 
a man who was only one among other men have power 
to redeem them all ? It needed the Son of God, who 
had power over all men, to redeem th'em.f And 

* Pages might be filled -with examples of this, and yet Mr. Garden 
('Tractsfor Priests and People,' iii. p. 4) starts back from one of them as 
Crusoe did from the footprint in the sand. " In 1 Pet. i. IS, we have an im- 
pressive sentence, which we read on in our habitual key of thought, but are 
surprised to find that it does not end on the key-note": — ' Forasmuch as ye 
know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, 
from [it is here that modern ears and thoughts will anticipate a different end- 
ing] your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers.' " This 
is the usual key-note of Scripture, but not the only note. The same Epistle 
speaks of redemption from wrath and eternal death (1 Pet. i. 5, ii. 10, iv. 
17, 1S\ 

t Cont. Arian. i. § 49. Comp. i. §§ 19, 87, ii. § 14, 20. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATU OF CUEIST. 393 

Arians, conscious of this, rested the redemption of men, 
not on any power inherent in the Saviour's natnre, but 
on the simple declaration of God that the curse was 
removed.* Cjadl objects to Nestorius that his doctrine 
makes the Atonement meaningless, for it refers it, not 
to one who is God and man, but to a man, whose rela- 
tion to God the Word is only external. f When the 
whole doctrine of the Person of Christ was the subject 
of searching controversy, the doctrine of Atonement 
did not emerge as the subject of a separate dispute ; 
but we maybe sure that it w^as never far off. And 
it may be that this is the clue to our present discus- 
sions about the Atonement. As of old it was involved 
in another controversy, so now the subject of that other 
controversy is involved in this ; and when w^e are in- 
vited to discuss whether one man can ever bear the 
sins of another, and whether vicarious punishment 
could ever be agreeable to God's justice, we cannot 
but notice that the divine nature of Christ is never 
strongly asserted on that side, or assumed as an ele- 
ment in the argument. The death of Jesus is dis- 
cussed as the death of a mere man. The most incau- 
tious rhetorical flights of orthodox sermons are selected 
for assault, in which a substitution of the innocent for 
the guilty is spoken of under the forms and phrases of 
human law, in the very points where human law is not 
applicable ; and the more deliberate expositions of faith 
are put on one side. We are accused of making that 
the corner-stone of the Christian faith which no creed 
fully defines. The necessity of our position compels 
us to make the Atonement prominent. But all the 
faith is involved in the discussion. When the views 
of Socinus on the Atonement are brought forth again, 
his notions as to the Eedeemer's person are' probably 
not far off. 

In modern writers who have touched the subject, an 
undue prominence is given to one feature of the patristic 
teaching, the notion that the ransom paid by our Lord 
was paid to the Devil, into whose power man had 

* Cont. Arian. ii. § 68. X Adv. Nestoriiis, iii. 2. 



gg^ ^AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

passed through sin.^ Thus what is for the most part 
rhetorical playing with words, is put forward as if it 
were the sole and the serious belief of these writers. 
The story bears a very different telling. There is not 
space for it here ; but a few quotations may be useful. 
The old Epistle to Diognetus f tells how God gave His 
Son a ransom for us ; and we are to rejoice that the 
Holy One died for the evil-doers, the sinless for the 
sinful ; for what was there, short of His righteousness, 
that would cover our sins ? Clement of Some :}: sees 
the truth not less clearly. According to Ignatius, § we 
owe our salvation to Christ crucified for us in the flesh, 
and to His "God-blessed passion." To the Jewish 
objection that the cross is accursed, and therefore un- 
worthy of Messiah, Justin Martyr retorts that this is 
matter for those to be ashamed of who inflicted the 
death, when the Father of all had "willed that His 
Christ should take the curses of all for the whole race 
of man, knowing that He would raise Him up after He 
had been crucified and put to death." || By Irenseus 
the Scriptural accounts of the Redemption are promi- 
nently put forward. As a man caused the fall, a man 
must cause the restoration ; he must be a man able to 
sicvi up {y^ecajyitidare) all the human species in himself, 
so as to bear the punishment of all, and to render an 
obedience that will compensate for their innumerable 
acts of disobedience. It suits not with tlie Divine nature 
to effect His will by force, but rather by love and influ- 
ence ; hence came the voluntary self-sacrifice, out of 
exceeding love, of the divine Son of Man, who is truly 
God and man ; and hence too men are not dragged, but 
drawn back to God from sin, embracing by an act of 
their will the offers of mercy made them through Christ. 
But, combined with these statements, there are indica- 
tions at least of the idea that Christ died to redeem men 
from a real objective power wdiich Satan had acquired 
over them, so that the redeeming price was paid, not so 

* Professor Jowett, ii. 572. Mr. Gardner (p. 4) devotes seventeen lines 
to the subject of the Fathers, and this theory occupies the whole of them; as 
if there were no other opinions worth mentioning. 

+ Ch. ix. X Ch. 1. § Ad Smyrn. oh. i. \ Dial. Tryph.,§ 95. 



Essay VIIL] THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 395 

mucli by way of debt due to the righteousness and jus- 
tice of God, as by way of ransom to release them from 
a conqueror, and to restore them to God, to whom they 
originally belonged. '* Since," says he, " the apostasy 
[the Devil] unjustly got the dominion over us, and, 
though we belonged by nature to the omnipotent God, 
alienated us against nature and made us his own disci- 
ples, the Word of God [Christ], powerful in all things 
and perfect in justice, acted justly in regard to the 
apostasy [the Devil], redeeming from it that which was 
His own ; not by force, in the way that it got dominion 
over us in the beginning, when it carried off insatiably 
that which belonged not to it, but by persuasion {secun- 
dum suadelam\ as it became God to receive what He 
would, by the use of persuasion, not of force, that justice 
should not be infringed, nor yet that which God created 
of old should perish." * Some have supposed that the 
words '' by persuasion " mean by a way which the Devil 
himself must be convinced was right and reasonable, 
but this would be strangely inconsistent with the general 
views of the writer. The apostate spirit, as he says in 
another place, persuaded men to transgress, but he used 
fraud and wrong to compass his purpose; and here 
Irenseus contrasts with this false persuasion, which he 
calls force and injustice, the fair and just persuasion by 
which the Son of Man, who has been lifted up, draws 
all men back to Him: The persuasion is addressed to 
lost men, and not to Satan. With Irenseus the redemp- 
tion was not a friendly treaty between two powers for 
the release of prisoners ; he says that Christ contended 
with, repulsed, conquered, despoiled, and bound the 
enemy of God and man. The point on which he lays 
most stress is certainly not the power which Satan has 
acquired, but the power that belongs inherently to our 
Redeemer of summing up in Himself the interests of 
the whole human race. He sees that to offer a sacrifice 
for all mankind is a privilege that can belong only to 
man on one side, for man's fault is in question ; only to 
the Divine Son of God on the other; for only He can 

* Adv. Hser. v. i. 1. 



396 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

control the destinies of all men. If the '^persuasion" 
has been rightly referred to rnari^ and not to Satan (and 
Dorner seems to have clearly established if^), then 
Irenseus goes very little beyond Holy Scripture in his 
attempt to explain the mystery of the power of the Evil 
One over us. In both we are to be redeemed from 
Satan and from death, in both the offering of One whose 
power over the human race is unlimited shall procure 
deliverance. The doctrine of the Atonement is knit 
up with that of the Incarnation ; and he does not ask 
whether one man can suffer for another, but what man- 
ner of person He must be whose sufferings can have 
power over all others to save them. 

The doctrine of Athanasius will furnish another 
sample of patristic teaching. Man fell through sin, 
says this great teacher ; and the righteousness of God 
was thus brought into conflict with His goodness. Ac- 
cording to His righteousness and truth, He who has 
given the law must inflict the allotted punishment on 
those who break it : but then His goodness could not 
suffer that man, made in his own image, should perish 
through the deceit of the Devil and his angels. It were 
better he had not been created. How shall this contra- 
diction be solved ? By man's repentance ? Simple re- 
pentance would be insufiicient on two grounds ; because 
the Divine veracity, which had promised death, would 
not have been satisfied, and because this would not free 
man from the physical corruption {rj Kara ^vaiv (pOopd) 
which he had incurred. The Word of God, the Son, 
who created the world, can alone restore it. He is 
above all, and can suffer and satisfy for all, and free all 
from their natural corruption ; for He indeed created 
them at first, and so can re-create. In order to this 
restoration, He, the incorporeal and incorruptible Word, 
made for Himself a temple, a house, in a human form 
and flesh. - Now andthen the expressions of Athanasius 
savour of Apollinarian views, as though Christ were 
the nature of God in the form of man, the human mind 

* 'Person Christi,' vol. i., p. 479, note against Baur, ' Yersohnung,' p. 35; 
compare notes in Thomson's ' Bampton Lectures,' p. 287. 



EssatVIII.] the death of chkist. 397 

being left out of the account ; but in other places no 
one has more strongly expressed himself against this 
very error, and his comm.ent on the words ''Let this 
cup pass from me," and on " The spirit is willing, but 
the flesh is weak," is that they reveal two wills in man 
— the human, that is of the flesh, and the Divine, which 
is from God. The analogy between the creation and 
the restoration of man is closely pursued by Athanasius. 
He describes the redemption more as a mere renewal 
than as a development and completion of the creation 
of man ; and here lies the peculiarity of his system. 
The curse of death is taken away ; but more than this, 
the Word becomes, through the Holy Ghost, a living 
principle difl'used through the hearts of men, freeing 
them from the power of sin, and enduing them with 
immortality. What part the death of the Lord bears 
.in our restoration will appear from such expressions as 
these. His death is " a sacrifice oflered on behalf of 
all and instead of all ; " "^ and it reconciles us to the 
Father,f for in it Jesus took on Him the punishments 
to which we were liable, and, by suffering in Llis own 
body our punishment, conferred salvation on us. :j: His 
death paid a debt, § and was a ransom for us. || As our 
High-Priest He brought Himself as an offering to the 
Father, to purge us from our sins by His own blood.^ 
The power of this sacrifice to reconcile for the whole 
human species arose from the position in which Jesus 
stands to us all ; He is the Creator, and again Pie is the 
Ruler of all the world and of mankind, and so nothing 
that He does, but must influence all. When a king 
comes into a great city, and takes up his dwelling in a 
single house of it, the honour of the visit is reflected on 
all the city ; enemies and robbers desist from their 
work, and, through the presence in one house, the whole 
city is protected. So it is with the presence of our 
King.** Who can fail to see in this system all the 
Scriptural elements of the Atonement faithfully pre- 

* De Incar. 20. f De Deer. 14. 

X Cont. Ar. i. 60. § Cout. Ar. ii. 66. 

[ Cont. Apol. ii. 12. IT Cont. Ar. ii. 7. 
** De Incar. ix. 



398 ^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

served ? More tlian this might be proved if space and 
time allowed : the anxious recurrence to Holy Writ as 
the rule of faith, the correction by the light of Scripture 
of statements that run perilously close to error. In the 
Fathers the various representations of the work of the 
Lord, — the ransom, the sacrifice, the conflict with Satan, 
— all have reference to His death. We have seen this 
in Athanasius. Tertullian uses the phrase that Christ 
is " the universal Priest of God," ^ in reference to His 
offering of Himself for men. 'No doubt the theories 
on this subject were indefinite and incomplete; but a 
greater mistake could not be made than to suj^pose that 
the doctrine of satisfaction and substitution was absent 
from the patristic writings, and lay dormant till the 
voice of Anselm woke it. Origen, who is often said to 
know nothing of the substitutive sufferings of the Lord, 
asserts them expressly in several passages. f Cyril of 
Jerusalem not less so : — " We were enemies of God 
through sin, and God had appointed the sinner to die. 
One of two things therefore must needs have happened, 
■' — that God keeping His word should destroy all men, 
or that ill- His loving kindness He should cancel the 
sentence. But behold the wisdom of God ; He pre- 
served both the truth of His sentence and the exercise 
of His loving kindness. Christ took our sins in His 
own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should 
live to righteousness." :j: So Cyril of Alexandria: — 
" Since they who were the servants of sin were made 
subject to the punishment of sin. He who was free from 
sin, and had trod the paths of all righteousness, under- 
went the punishment of sinners, destroying by His 
Cross the sentence of the old curse . . . ' being made a 
curse for us.' " § The same doctrine is found in Augus- 
tine, Hilary of Poitiers, and Ambrose. I^one of these 
writers w^orked out into a system the doctrine of the 

* Cont. Marc. iv. 9. 

t Cont. Cels: ii. 23, and vol. xviii. 14, Explan. in Epist. ad Bom. iii. 8. 
Compare Mohler, Symbolik. p. 247. 

X Catech. xiii. 33. 

I De Incarnatione, ch. xxv. in Mai's Patrum Bibliotheca. It is doubtful 
whether this work is Cyril's, but it is of about the same date, and other pas- 
sages as express are quoted from Cyril's acknowledged works. 



E88ATVIII.] THE DEATH OF C HEIST. 399 

substitutive sacrifice of Christ ; but it is absurd to pre- 
tend, with these passages before us, that Anselm was 
the inventor of the doctrine, and the destroyer of another 
wdiich is supposed to have usurped dominion over the 
minds of all the Fathers. It is something more than 
absurd when words are put into the mouth of Gregory 
J^azianzen which he never spoke, to the effect that 
there is no danger in errors about the mode of our 
redemption. "^ 

* By what means a weak cause may be supported will appear from the 
history of a spurious quotation. Mr. Garden, in his tract already quoted, 
says : " In the strong language of Gregory Nazianzen, we may affirm that 
* the mode in which Christ has redeemed us is a matter in which we may err 
without danger.' " If Gregory the Theologian had made such an assertion, 
DO doubt the language would have been as strong as it was startling. But 
he never did. Mr. Garden follows Professor Jowett, who says : " Gregory 
of [sic] Nazianzen numbers speculations about the sufferings of Christ among 
those things on which it is useful to have correct ideas, but not dangerous to 
be mistaken." Professor Jowett has followed F. C, Baur, who, however, 
quotes the whole passage, and not a fragment of a sentence, and admits that 
it is not in harmony with the rest of Gregory's views. The passage in 
question comes from the first of the ' Theological Orations' of Gregory (Orat. 
xxvii. [xxxiii.]), in which he is inveighing against the Eunomians for the 
length to which they carry their speculations on the nature and counsels of 
God. He suggests other subjects of discussion from profane philosophy, in 
which they may show off" their skill and eloquence without wronging God by 
irreverence. He then says : " But if you think these things unworthy of 
discussion, as trifling things that have been often refuted, and desire to em- 
ploy yourself on your own subjects, and seek the distinction that may arise 
trom these, I will afford you even here a wide field. Philosophize about the 
world or worlds, about matter, the soul, about reasonable creatures higher 
and lower, about resurrection, judgment, retribution, tlie sufferings of Christ ; 
for in these tilings to attain our object is not useless, and to Jail of it is free 
from peril {rh iirirvyxaveiv ovk &xpv<^'rou Koi rh Bia/xaprdfeiv d/ciVSuj/oy)." 
Here there is not a word about " the mode in which Christ has redeemed 
us ; " the nature of our Lord's sufferings is what they are allowed to discuss, 
and not the consequences of those sufferings, of which no hint is given. As 
well say that the passage tells us it is safe to err on the side of materialism, 
because matter is mentioned ; or safe to deny the soul's immortality, because 
the soul is mentioned. There are questions, physical and metaphysical, 
about all these things, which admit of discussion, and )'et need not trench on 
vital Christian truth. The origin and duration of the world, the nature of 
matter, the soul's connexion with the body, the nature of reason, the state of 
the body in the resurrection, the nature of future rewards and punishments, 
the sufferings of the Lord, how far physical and how far mental, are all ques- 
tions of this sort. It is not even clear that the word dia/xapTdveiv means " to 
err from the truth ; " it may be, as Leunclavius renders it, " to fail of your 
object," and the object in this case is success in disputation. But on this I 
do not insist. We have here the solitary patristic quotation by which lax 
views about the Atonement are supposed to be encouraged ; and Mr. Jowett 
prints part of the sentence, when the whole would have at once disarmed 
his argument, whilst Mr. Garden puts w^ords into the mouth of this Father 
which he never used, which he could not and would not have used. We are 
thankful for the admission that this is the best that can be done on that side 



400 ^II^S TO FAITH. [EbsayVIIL 

7. But it is time to pass to Anselm, the reputed 
parent of our modern teaching ; and we ought to be 
thoroughly satisfied upon the question whether he has 
or has not supplanted the Bible in our pulpits and 
treatises, and in our thoughts. The Cur Deus Homo^ 
of this great and truly humble writer, is an attempt to 
answer the question. Why was it requisite for man's 
salvation that God should become man ? Considering 
the Divine omnipotence, we might expect that the 
mere fiat of His will or the acceptance of some lower 
sacrifice than that of the only begotten Son of God. 
might have sufficed to eifect the reconciliation. The 
incidents of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion seem 
derogatory to God ; the Infinite Spirit clothing Him- 
self with a finite nature, and allowing finite men and 
the power of evil to assail and triumph over Him, 
these are representations that may shock our rever- 
ence. If redemption was required at all, why was it 
not efiected by means of a sinless man who was no 
more than man ? A mere man caused the fall, a mere 
man might have sufiiced for the restoration. Anselm 
replies that this would not have j^rocured man's per- 
fect restoration, for it would have left men dependent 
on one of themselves ; he to whom they owed re- 
demption would have been in some sense their mas- 
ter instead of God. But why, it may be urged, was 
there any need of redemption at all? When we speak 
of God's anger, we mean neither more nor less than 
His will to punish. The moment that will is with- 
drawn, there is neither anger nor punishment to fear ; 
and so it might appear that a mere revocation of the 
will to punish would of itself constitute salvation. 
The argument that God gave His Son as a ransom for 
man from the power of Satan, because it was right 

of the argument. Let us put a true quotation from Gregory in the place of 
the sham one : "... the very sufferings of Christ by which all of us, without 
exception, were restored (aueiT\dad7]/j.et/) who partake of the nature of the 
same Adam, and were deceived by the serpent and brought into the death 
of sin, and were saved again by the heavenly Adam, and were brought back 
to the tree of life whence we had fallen, by means of the tree of ignominy" 
(Orat. xxxiii. p. 609, ed. Paris, 1840). This is one among many statements 
as to " the mode in which Christ redeemed us." 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHKIST. 401 

and just to recover by fair means a race who had freely 
and vohmtarily given themselves over to his power, is 
at once dismissed : for the true reasons, namely, that 
the Devil cannot properly have either merit or power 
or right over man ; that the power which in one sense 
he exerts against mankind was only permissive, and 
that it expired when the permission was withdrawn. 
He then proceeds to establish the need of redemption 
on purer grounds. Every creature that can will and 
act owes to God an entire obedience, as the honour due 
to Him. All sin, then, is a wrong done to His honour, of 
what kind soever the offence is. Punishment must 
attach to sin invariabl}^, in order to mark the difference 
between sin and holiness ; it would not only encourage 
sin, if men thought that the Almighty were blind to it, 
but would obscure and distort our views of the Divine 
nature itself, it we conceived of Him as one to whom 
sin and its opposite are both alike. We should thus 
regard God as admitting sin into the order of the 
universe w^ithout dissent or protest, whereas we know 
that the very nature of sin is disorder. God, however, 
cannot suffer disorder ; for though sin could not really 
detract from His power and dignity, its aim and in- 
tent are to dishonour and deface, as far as may be, the 
beauty of the Divine government. If it may do this 
and yet draw at pleasure on the Divine but free forgive- 
ness, unrighteousness is more free and unshackled 
than obedience. E'ow no man can render for his 
brethren the full obedience required : " a sinner cannot 
justify a sinner." Even if a man with his heart full of 
love and contrition w^ere to renounce all earthly 
solaces, and in labour and abstinence to strive to obey 
God in all things, and to do good to all and forgive all, 
he would only be doing his duty. But he is unable to 
do even this ; and it is his misery that he cannot plead 
his inability as an excuse, because that proceeds from 
sin. He must be of the same nature as those for 
w^hom he renders the obedience, in order that it may 
be accepted as theirs ; and yet if the satisfaction is to 
be complete, he must be able to render to God some- 



402 ^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay TIIL 

thing greater than every created tliiag, for among raen 
pure rigliteoiisness is not to "be found ; and if so, he 
mnst be God, for what is there above the creature but 
God Himself? Therefore he must be God and man, 
vrhose life far exalted above all created things must be 
infinitely valuable. As to the manner of this redemp- 
tion, Anselm uses these words, which bear on a con- 
troverted point in his theory: — "If man sinned for 
pleasure, is it not consistent that he should make satisfac- 
tion by hardness ? And if he were most easily over- 
come by the Devil, so as to dishouour God by sin, is 
it not just that man, making satisfaction to God for 
sin, should conquer the Devil, for the honour of God, 
in the most difiicult manner?"' If he departed from 
God completely by sin, the mode of making satisfac- 
tion should be by a complete devotion to God. aSow 
man can nndergo nothing harder or more difficult, for 
the honour of God, than death ; nor can he devote 
himself to God more completely than when he delivers 
himself to death for His honour.^ But Anselm insists 
more on the life of obedience which was acted out 
by Jesus, and which no other could have rendered, as 
the satisfaction which was rendered to God. He made 
atonement for men, by rendering through life a per- 
fect obedience, in lieu of theirs, and by a death which, 
as sinless. He did not owe, and as God He might have 
escaped. Thus is the Divine mercy, which seenis to 
be excluded when we think of the Divine justice and 
of the infinite amount of sin, brought into perfect 
harmony with justice, so that the reason can discern 
that no better scheme of redemption could have been 
devised. 

8. This is a rough sketch of the system to which, 
as we are often told, modern theology is indebted for 
the theorv of satisfaction which it teaches. "We are 



I find in this passage the doctrine of vicarions retribution, 
fails to find in the Cur Deus Homo. Mr. Garden (p. o\ in de- 



* II. 11. 
which Baur 

ciding between us on this point, thinks it enough to quote a passage in the 
next chapter ill. 12) which is supposed to preclude the doctrine. The pas- 
sage, however, seems to me wholly irrelevant, referring merelv to the ques- 
tion whether what one does willingly can be the cause 6i misery. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CUEIST. 493 

supposed bj many to owe the doctrine of the Cross to 
a pious Christian writer, as late as the eleventh century. 
Let us sift the claim. 

The foundation of Anselm's theory is found in 
Athanasius. Both these writers view the Atonement 
habitually as a transaction before the bar of Divine 
justice in heaven ; both seek the explanation of its 
possibility in the divine nature of him who atones ; 
both conceive it as the payment of a debt due to God. 
It would have been equally hard for both to admit the 
force of the modern objection that it is not lawful for 
one man to be punished for another; for while the 
perfect human nature of the Lord was essential to 
complete the Atonement, the human nature is dwelt in 
by the divine, and tliTe will that chooses to suffer for 
man is divine. "With both these writers the great mo- 
ment of the Atonement is found in the Incarnation ; 
in the presence in human flesh of one able to act for 
men. What we owe to Anselm is not so much the 
general plan of salvation as the minute and careful 
delineation of it. Nowhere else is there such logical 
precision, such a continuous chain of deduction. This 
is the kind of originality which we ought to attribute 
to him. 

9. Anselm has indeed introduced a word, which 
has ever since been associated w^ith the dogma of the 
Atonement — the word satisfaction. But a new word 
is not necessarily an innovation in thought. The 
legal sense of the word satisfaction is the appeasing a 
creditor on the subject of his debt, not necessarilj^ by 
the payment of it (solutio), but by any means that he 
will accept. It is used more than once by Tertullian, 
but not in the sense of vicarious satisfaction ; in that 
sense no doubt it owes its currency to Anselm. It has 
gone far to replace the word sacrifice. But the funda- 
mental ideas of the two words are not so far apart as 
is often assumed. Sacrifice, in the usage of the Bible, 
is the appointed rite by which a Jewish citizen, who 
has broken the law and forfeited thereby his position 
within the pale of the Covenant, is enabled to procure 



404 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay YIII. 

his restoration. It is a Jewish word, and belongs to 
the positive provisions of the Jewish polity, and not to 
general ethics. Still, as the Jewish constitution, re- 
flected the general dealings of God with all the world, 
the term sacrifice applies to the restoration of all men 
who have strayed from God by their sins. "With 
thankful hearts we may look up to Christ as the lamb 
of our paschal sacrifice ; since by His death and resur- 
rection, and without any merit or efi*ort of our own, 
we are restored to the place before God which we had 
lost. The word satisfaction, on the other hand, implies 
a debt which we have not the means of paying, a debt 
of punishment in consequence of our sins, or of obe- 
dience to compensate former disobedience. Both 
terms imply a restoration through something which is 
not us nor ours. Whether we speak of it as a sacrifice 
or a payment, the same thought may be present to our 
minds ; a reconcilement of God and us, wrought not 
by us but by our Eedeem.er. It is a gain to us, as 
sacrificial usages become forgotten, to acquire a term 
which expresses the same idea appealing to the prin- 
ciples of general ethics. But facts, and not words, are 
the subject of revelation ; what we believe is that the 
death of the Redeemer purchased our life, our recon- 
ciliation, that without His obedience our sins would 
have borne their natural fruit of death. And whether 
we call this act a sacrifice, on account of its being an 
ofi'ering to appease the Divine wrath, or a satisfaction, 
as it is a mode of payment which God accepts instead 
of the debt of obedience that we cannot render, is of 
less importance than might at first appear. So long as 
we believe that the wrath of God because of our diso- 
bedience fell in the shape of affliction on Him who 
alone had so acted as to please God, the terms in which 
it may be expressed may be sufi'ered to vary. 

10. The system of Anselm is indeed open to criti- 
cism, but not for the introduction of the word sacrifice. 
So far is it from being an undue development of Holy 
Writ, that it falls far short of it in the completeness of 
its statements. As the Atonement transcends all our 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 405 

means of exposition, it must needs be that, the more 
exactly it is litted to any analogous human affairs, the 
more entirely will some of its complex elements be 
omitted from the description. Hence, for example, 
there is the danger lest the Atonement degenerate into 
a transaction between a righteous Father on the one 
side, and a loving Saviour on the other, because in the 
human transaction from which the analogy is drawn 
two distinct parties are concerned ; whereas in the 
plan of salvation one will operates, and in the Father 
and the Son alike justice and love are reconciled. 
Again, the reconciliation effected by Christ appears 
rather as a bringing God into harmony with Himself, 
His mercy with His justice, than as a reconciliation of 
man with God. The passages of Scripture that speak 
of the wrath of God against man are not explicable of 
Anselm's system. The exclamation of the Baptist, 
that Jesus is the Lamb of God, that taketh away the 
sin of the world ; the prophecy of His sufferings by 
Isaiah (ch. liii.) ; the w^ords of Peter that He " his own 
self bare our sins in his own body on the tree ;"* and 
passages of like import in St. Paul's writings,*}- can 
only hnd place with Anselm by a very forced interpre- 
tation. His scheme is mainly this, that the merit of 
the perfect obedience of Jesus was so great as to de- 
serve a great reward, and that in answer to the prayer 
of the Lord this reward was given in the form of the 
salvation of His brethren. But Christ does not appear 
in this system as groaning and suffering under the 
curse of the world, as He does in Holy Scripture. 
Until the time of Anselm the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment had within certain limits fluctuated with the 
change of teachers ; the doctrine itself was one and 
the same, but this or that aspect of it had been made 
prominent. Anselm aimed at fixing in one system the 
scattered truths ; and the result has been that he, like 
his predecessors, made some parts of the truth conspic- 
uous to the prejudice of the rest. 

11. Looking fairly at the whole period from Igna- 

* 1 Pet. ii. 24. + Gal. iii. 13. 2 Cor. v. 21. 



4Qg AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

tins to Anselm, we are obliged to own that the efficacy 
of the death of the Lord was always believed, and that 
of the three parts or moments of this doctrine, the love, 
and the justice, and the practical obedience, not one 
fell to the ground. The theory of a victory over Satan, 
gained by deceit, shrinks into its proper proportions ; 
it is an excrescence on the truth, and not a leprosy 
turning all the truth into corruption. 

III. 1. Holy Scripture contains the doctrine, and the 
Church has ahvays taught it. Whence, then, the re- 
pugnance to it which some persons of serious and de- 
vout minds have expressed ? The objections for the 
most part take the form of a denial that it is possible 
that one man should suffer for the sin of another ; that 
the Vv' rath of God could be appeased by the sacrifice of 
one who had done no sin in the place of the sinful. A 
thorough-going sense of man's responsibility for his own 
acts, and a reluctance to own that the sufferings of the 
just can ever be the consequence of the sins of others, 
are the two principal motives at work. How can these 
be most easily dealt with ? 

2. All the difficulties that belong to this question 
are introduced prior to it by a consideration of sin it- 
self The conscience of man admits that there is such 
a thing as guilt ; and so strong, decided, and constant 
is its witness, that there is no fear that mankind in the 
long run will attempt to explain away the fact that sin 
exists. But when I am asked to believe that it is 
against the Divine plan that any other being should 
take away from me any of the consequences of my 
guilt, I think myself entitled to say that it is the cor- 
relative of this proposition that no one should have 
brought upon me any of the guilt and its consequences. 
It is surely not more rejDugnant to God's justice that 
another should bear my guilt than that I should be 
guilty because of another ; nay, Divine justice will be 
more readily reconciled with a plan in which One who 
is entirely willing to bear my sin should take off its in- 
tolerable burden from me who am earnestly desirous 
to get rid of it, than with a plan in which sinfulness 



Essay VIIL] THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 407 

devolves from one v^ho did not mean his own faults to 
do me harm, upon me who by no means wished to in- 
herit them. But this kind of devolution^ or transmis- 
sion, is a fact of constant occurrence of which no man 
can be ignorant. We open the works of writers like 
Broussais and Biichner, and find such importance given 
to the influence on moral habits of hereditary transmis- 
sion, of age, sex, maladies, mode of living, and climate, 
that the doctrine of individual responsibility seems for 
the moment to be in peril. We need to retire within, 
and take counsel of conscience, in order to resist the 
invitation to believe "that what w^e call free-will is 
nothing but our being conscious of a will, without be- 
ing conscious of the antecedents that determine its 
mode of action," which, translated into plainer non- 
sense, w^ould mean — being conscious of our will with- 
out being conscious that we did not possess one. But 
all are agreed that outward circumstances and inward 
constitution derived from parents and ancestors by 
physical laws, have a great influence upon the charac- 
ter of men. In extreme cases this may be true to the 
extent of paralysing the will altogether. If a young 
man has sprung from parents of intemperate habits, 
who lived by stealing, and has been brought up among 
companions of the same sort, we shall hardly look to 
find him any better than the soil in which he grew ; 
and any efforts to amend him and call forth his moral 
nature would be preceded by the effort to transplant 
him. Alike in the good and evil qualities of men the 
effect of hereditary transmission comes under daily 
notice. And since w^e are always invited in this ques- 
tion to discuss it in forensic language, and are told that 
no man can be allowed before a human tribunal to 
take upon himself the position of the criminal and 
suffer the punishment of another, because every one 
arraigned there must bear his own burden, we must 
remark that,- if every one did actually bear his own 
burden there, human justice would have attained a 
perfection which it has never yet boasted. In gradu- 
ated punishments for the same offence there is a rough 



408 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

attempt to take into account the antecedents of the 
criminal and the amount of his tem2)tation ; but these 
palliations are not proved in evidence, and it is by a 
rough guess only that an equitable apportionment of 
punishment is attempted. In defining the line at 
which mental imbecility extinguishes all sense of re- 
sponsibility laws have utterly failed, and tribunals 
have stultified themselves by conflicting decisions. 
But the arguments on these cases prove that all be- 
lieve in a class of minds where guilt is just imputable 
and no more, — where the mental debility, often con- 
genital, all but extinguishes the moral offence. In 
cases of such nice difficulty, mistakes must be made ; 
punishment must fall on the wrong man. ]^or is this 
mere speculation ; a man has been decided insane at 
one place for a crime for which another man at another 
place has been hanged, according as the judge and jury 
made prominent in their minds the safety of society or 
consideration for the supposed criminal. Capital pun- 
ishment has fallen upon men who, upon the same facts 
before a different tribunal, would have been judged to 
have exercised no choice at all, but to have acted out 
the course to which birth and disease and the like 
compelled them. Absolute compulsion of this kind is 
no doubt rare ; but absolute freedom is more than rare, 
it is impossible. Men enter this world the heirs of pas- 
sions, perhaps cultivated in the last generation to an 
unnatural height ; they are nurtured on bad examples 
and a low morality, so that they cannot do the things 
that they would. And it is the rule, and not the ex- 
ception, that men's moral actions are tinctured with 
the colour of the actions of others before and around 
them, which they could not possibly have caused. 
Isow, if these facts are admitted, — ^if, instead of that 
perfect isolation of responsibility which some insist on, 
a joint responsibility is the universal rule, — with what 
show of reason can they pretend that it is on this ground 
that the Christian scheme is untenable ? Look into the 
black London allej^s teeming with ignorance, improvi- 
dence, and vice ; do you not see written in those faces 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 409 

eloquent in wretchedness, " We did not place ourselves 
here : were the choice given us freely, we would not be 
as we are " ? Then what do we think of the consisten- 
cy of those who see guilt brought on by others, but 
think it revolting that another should take it off? Liv- 
ing comments upon the words "In Adam all die" 
abound, and cannot be blotted out : it ought not then 
to revolt our moral sense that those other words are 
added, "In Christ shall all be made alive." The latter 
words, in fact, go far to solve the mystery of the former. 
For the constant transmission of sinfulness, the heritage 
of sins bequeathed from the fathers to their children, is 
revolting to the moral sense when severed from the 
thought of a Deliverer. The message of Heaven to us 
is, " Ye are all of one family, partakers of the family 
heritage of sin, and wretchedness, and ruin ; and yet 
every one of you driven by the stimulus of conscience 
to protest against the ruin, and to erect yourselves 
above it. Ye are accustomed to this derived destruc- 
tion, this hereditary partnership in guilt ; lift your eyes 
one step further back, to that common Father from 
whom ye sprung, from whom ye have lived in separa- 
tion. By taking your nature I will re-establish that 
lost connection, I will make the Father's lost favour 
accessible to you again. I will undo the curse, by 
placing myself under it. I w^ill sanctify the flesh, 
which the sin of generations has made unclean. For 
I am partaker of the Father's nature, and the power 
over you which belongs to Him is mine also ; and I 
am partaker of your nature in all save in the sin of it ; 
and thus I am the Mediator between Grod and man." 

3. There is then nothing new or startling in the rev- 
elation of a great moral good bestowed on us without 
our effort; it is in harmony with the system i^mder 
which we live, as members of a great family having 
common interests even in things belonging to the soul. 
But, beside the general fact, the mode of our redemp- 
tion, mysterious as it must be, should still be in har- 
mony with our mental constitution ; it should be such 
as not to shock our natural expectation. We cannot 
18 



410 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay VIIL 

possibly hope to understand it ; but it must not be such 
that we can understand it ought not to be. The ques- 
tion — Why should Jesus have died for our sins instead 
of simply declaring forgiveness ? Why was not He the 
ambassador of forgiveness instead of the artificer of it ? — 
will obtrude even upon submissive minds. ]^ow the 
death of Jesus, after such a life as His, was the crown- 
ing act and achievement of sin ; and so showed to man 
the extent of his own corruption. Here was one whose 
every act went to deserve the titles of " the Holy One, 
and the Just," whose love for His own people gushed 
forth through the openings of a hundred miracles 
wrought for their good : whose speech was meek, and 
whose life could provoke no jealousy, nor threaten the 
foundations of any lawful power; who had fed, or 
healed, or taught many thousands of the people that 
ouglit to have been ready witnesses in His behalf; whose 
doctrines seldom failed to produce on the hearers a pro- 
found impression in favour of a teacher different from 
and far above all others ; yet whose goodness quickened 
the hatred of those in authority, and was the direct 
cause of reviling, persecution, and death. By how 
much the example of the sinless Jesus is conspicuous, 
by so much is the sin of His persecution and death in- 
tensified. Had there been in the Lord (the supposition 
must be pardoned) one trace of human folly or sin, 
high-priest and Pharisee would have been more toler- 
ant, because the contrast that rebuked them would have 
been less violent. But that shining armour showed no 
flaw nor stain. Their hatred was pure hatred of good- 
ness ; their sentence of death was passed because there 
was no crime ; the death itself was the first death that 
was the wages of no sin. And so the Apostles, in 
preaching the Gospel, wanted no better arguments for 
condemning sin : that men had imbrued their hands in 
the blood of One who was sinless and who loved them, 
was enough to abase any candid spirit. As when some 
man of doubtful repute becomes suddenly recognized as 
the author of some enormous crime, and all his fellows 
recoil from him, and will not give him a cup of w^ater 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. /^n 

lest tliey seem to countenance his evil deed, so, when 
mankind saw that the blood of the sinless Jesus was red 
on the hand of the rulers and the people, they were 
pricked to the heart by the spectacle, and fled from a 
haunt of guilt too horrible for them to live in longer. 

" Men and brethren, what shall we do ? Save 

yourselves from this untoward generation." ^ In tlie 
death of Jesus sin stood revealed to itself. In that deed 
it first reached its full height ; it brought forth into act 
all the potential consequences of ages of lust and malice. 
The devil was a liar and a murderer from the beginning, 
and men obeyed him in all falsehood and wrong. But 
he never showed what he was capable of till he mur- 
dered the sinless Redeemer in the name of God. And 
with that crowning act his power was scattered and 
overthrown. We are almost tempted to recur to the 
language of the Fathers, as to the delusion into which 
Satan was betrayed. Satan as lightning fell from heav- 
en, just as he stood upon the highest heap of ruin. 
And out of the discord and the darkness of that hour, 
the most terrible in human history, was heard a voice 
proclaiming peace to man, just when Satan's foot was 
planted most firmly on his neck. 

4. *•' But," it is answ^ered, " what we object to is the 
use of such words as imply that Jesus fell under the 
wrath of God and became a curse for us. These cannot 
be applied properly to our Lord ; but if at all, only in 
a loose and figurative way." Now what are the tokens 
of the curse under which man labours ?t It shows 
itself in his social relations, in his relation to nature, and 
in his relation to God. 

The contrast between our aspirations after social 
progress and the actual state of society marks strongly 
the eftect of sin and wrath upon it. "Whilst we sigh 
after a reign of industry and peace and love, the thun- 
ders of a causeless and profitless war mutter again in 
the air, and portend the loss of the fruits of fifty years 
of progress to the devoted nations engaged in it. We 

* Acts ii. 37, 40. 

t See Gess, Lehre, v. d. * Versuhnung.' 



^22 -^II^S TO FAITH. pisBAYVIIL 

would befriend and raise the poor, but the necessities 
of their position are a chain round them that seems to 
make us and them helpless for good. For want of a 
little more food and a little more room in their dwell- 
ings, the sublimest truths fall dead upon their ears. 
Every great step of social progress, however plainly 
good and just, has had its battlefields or its scaffolds. 
Doubt, and suffering, and selfishness abound. Com- 
mercial speculations, founded in sheer fraud, collapse 
and bury the trusting multitude in their ruins. Life 
must be for most of our population a constant struggle 
against starvation. The complaints against our present 
social condition come not from Christian writers only, 
but from social reformers of every degree and creed."^ 

The relations of man to nature are likewise '"out of 
joint." Tiie high purposes that the soul is able to con- 
ceive are thwarted by the body. Hereditary indolence, 
or temper, or desire, stands across the path ; and men 
despair when they me.asure their meagre performance 
with their high promise, and find too often the evil habit 
growing on them and checking their pace, as the chee- 
tah pulls down the running deer. And the bodily or- 
ganism, crip23led at the outset with the faults perhaps 
of a former generation, breaks down prematurely ; and 
" the night when no man can work" overtakes the pil- 
grim when morn has scarcely passed. 

But the third effect of the curse i*worse than these ; 
the relation between God and man is broken by sin. 
" Sin is a great ditch and wall, dividing us from God."f 
The law of God is lost, and the soul becomes dark and 
self-seeking, and without purposes of good. Sometimes 
extravagant and nameless horrors of vice show what 
man without God may be capable of::j; but always the 
want of God has been accompanied by want of love and 
of good purposes and of self-government. And the 
wages of sin have been death ; a death of the spirit in 
men that seemed to live. 

5. ;N"ow it is idle to discuss whether we ought to say 

* For example, see the opening chapter of Buchez, * Science de I'Histoire.' 
t Theophylact. in Luc. 14. J Rom. i. 28. Gal. v. 19. 



EbsayYIii.] the death of chkist. 413 

that our Lord became a curse for us, if we have not ex- 
hausted the direct evidence of wliat He became and 
sufiered for us. Did He or did He not put His neck 
under the yoke of this curse and bear His share of it? 

Did He claim any social exemption ? He accepted 
the evils of poverty ; it followed Him from the manger 
to the carpenter's workshop, to the wilderness. For 
thirty years He dwelt with a family that did not under- 
stand Him, in a city that despised Him and would rebel 
against His first efforts to teach. His conversation was 
not among scholars^ nor statesmen ; but with lepers and 
lunatics, with halt and maimed, with men afflicted and 
230ssessed. All the sufferings of our social state, all that 
makes the aspect of society painful to a feeling heart, 
were brought around Him, and He showed no repug- 
nance= The twelve whom He chose for His friends, to 
receive His constant teaching, were dull scholars, who 
knew Him not, even to the end. At last a disciple be- 
trayed Him ; the priest of His Father pronounced that 
it was good that He should die for the people ; the 
Prince of the chosen people was dfelivered up by them 
to the Gentiles, and put to death; and His disciples 
fled in terror from His side. 

But it is to be* observed that, even if the death of 
our Lord had not taken place, even if He had ascended 
in glory without being put to death in shame, it would 
have been true that He became a curse for us. In 
point of justice there would be no question of degree ; 
and even if there had been no death, that Jesus should 
have suffered even one look of scorn from some proud 
Nazarene who knew him as the carpenter's son, and 
this on our account, would involve the whole discussion 
of the Divine justice. The sinless and the just has suf- 
fered something which He did not deserve, be it little 
or great. If we are so rash as to impugn the Divine 
justice at all, understanding it so little, we must begin 
before the cross, with the first indignity, with the first 
pressure of earthly want. It is, perhaps, natural that 
the shocking discrepancy between the Divine sufferer 

* Luke iy. 28.] 



414 ^II>-S TO FAITH. [EssatYIIL 

and tlie mode of His death should shock our sense of 
justice more than all that had gone before; because 
death awakens our sympathies more powerfully than 
the less harrowing incidents of a life of hardship. Eut 
if we are to appeal to a metaphysical theory of Divine 
justice, we must analyze our facts more exactly; and 
then one of our first admissions must be, that if it is 
unjust to slay it is unjust to smite or to degrade. And 
in order to set our theory going, we shall have to soften 
with docetic glosses not only the account of the passion, 
but that of the whole life of the Eedeemer. 

But he tastes also the bitterness of death. Death 
came by disobedience ; and the fear of death, and of 
all the possible consequences of death, has been one of 
the burdens of the human race ever since. " Through 
fear of death " men "were all their lifetime subject 
unto bondage." * One who should be exempt from the 
fear of death would not bear the whole burden of man's 
condition. How far was the liedeemer partaker of 
this fear? Perhaps it is difficult to sever the dread of 
death from the burden of sin which was in death to be 
born ; but towards the close of the history we see the 
Eedeemer girding Himself for the terrible suffering, 
" steadfastly setting his face to go to Jerusalem, ''+ ex- 
pressing His state of pain until the baptism that He 
must be baptized with could be accomj^lished.;!: Tears 
had fallen from His eyes at seeing the stroke of death 
take effect on Lazarus his friend; and from the thought 
of His own death there was that shrinking which be- 
longs to a man. He shared our curse in tasting the 
bitterness of death. 

And with the thought of death must have mingled 
a still more gloomy thought — the sense of the weight 
of sin. It is at this point that some will cease to go 
along with us. That any true feeling of sin, as of a 
burden on His own spirit, can ever have belonged to 
Jesus, is what some, careful for the honour of their 
Lord, will not admit. Let us refrain from theories on 
Buch a subject on both sides. But there are two places 

* Heb. ii. 15. t Matt. s. 32. J Luke xii. 50. 



Essay YIII.] THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 415 

of the Gospel history that cannot be understood except 
on the supposition that sin and the power of darkness 
were sufl'ered to press upon Him with a terrible weight. 
The scene in Gethsemane is one w4iich Christians 
would fain keep out of their disputes ; '-^ yet it is de- 
scribed for our instruction, and we must venture to enter 
there, i^nd it seems to me that those who would place 
all the import of the Lord's death in its being a heroic 
termination of a heroic and devout life, and an example 
of a faith true to itself even in extremity, receive under 
these olive-trees their most complete refutation. For, 
first, the Eedeemer here appears harrowed by a misery 
which many a martyr has been free from, utterly per- 
turbed by a prospect which a Stephen, an Ignatius, a 
Ridley viewed without dismay. If no more than death 
is in question, we should expect an example of calm 
reliance on the present help of God. But we find the 
unaccountable agony, the bloody sweat, the prayer for 
deliverance : all fortifying and calming influences seem 
withdrawn for a time from Him who through His life 
so constantly enjoyed them. We are astonished that 
the curse of our race should be suff'ered to press in all 
its terrible reality upon the sinless and divine Son. Yet 
there is the description of His great struggle. We can- 
not refuse to see that it relates to One utterly broken 
down for a time in a wretchedness beyond our concep- 
tion, a prey to thoughts which, judging by their out- 
ward effects, were far darker than those of the felon the 
night before his execution, when He counts the quar- 
ters of each hour, and hears the hammers that are busy 
at his scaffold. If our salvation is to be made an easier 
work, if the price paid is to be abated, we must forget 
Gethsemane or deny it.f But if we believe with the 

* " A feeling always seizes me," says Krummacher, ^' as if it were unbe- 
coming to act as a spy on the Son of the living God in His last secret 
transactions with His heavenly Father ; and that a sinful eye ventures too 
much in daring to look upon a scene in which the Lord appears in such a 
state of weakness and abandonment that places Him on the same footing 
with the most miserable among men." 

t Mr. Garden, whose theory is that the Lord would never have felt misery, 
is here consistent. He forgets Gethsemane altogether : he quotes only our 
Lord's words upon the Cross. — Tracts, &c., p. 10, 



416 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

Apostle that " God liath made Him to be sin for us 
Who knew no sin, that we might be made the right- 
eousness of God in Him,""^ then the terror and the 
agony become accountable. All the inner horror of 
sin is revealed to Him. Sin in its nakedness is more 
horrible than death. And He sees it as it is; the 
blasphemous self-worship that it is, the revolt against 
God, the violation of order, the death in life. And all 
this sin is His, though He is sinless of it : for He has 
thrown in His lot with men, and has proposed to Him- 
self the task of breaking down this foul and destroying 
tyranny. The mystery of that agency lies in the com- 
pleteness of His humanity. He is no bystander, watch- 
ing how men sin. He is one of themselves, but with 
the power of God over them to make their interests His 
ov/n. In Him, as God, they live, and move, and have 
their being: and now the power of darkness is let loose 
to show Him all the sin and misery, and defiance of 
God, that He, by clothing Himself with human nature, 
has taken into His bosom. The words of the Lord upon 
the cross are an echo from the garden of agony : "Why 
hast Thou forsaken me?" These w^ords from the 
twenty-second Psalm, uttered at such a moment, are of 
course no mere ejaculation of pain ; they recall a Psalm 
which, as any one may see, contains matter that can 
apply to Messiah only. But the words themselves ex- 
press a sense of desertion by God : they can have no 
other meaning. Yain would it be to attempt to explain 
how He, one with the Father, and never severed from 
Him by spot or stain of guilt, could have admitted such 
a feeling. But there are the words : we dare not deny 
them. They belong to Him, not as Son of God, but 
as burdened with the sins of the world. They express 
perhaps the complete separation which sin makes be- 
tween man and God. He is now the Advocate of all 
mankind ; and their separation from God because of 
sin extends itself to Him for a season. It appears, then, 
that the question whether the wrath of God can be said 
to have fallen upon the Son, who has done no sin, is no 

* 2 Cor. V. 21. 



Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OE CHKIST. 41 7 

verbal question, but a question of fact. Jesus did suf- 
fer all those things which are the evident tokens of 
wrath against us. He tried the sufferings of our dis- 
jointed social state ; Pie knew the fear of death, and the 
anguish of sin which separates from God. The motives 
of those who would protect his name from the sup- 
posed contamination of sin, are not unworthy of respect. 
'' Be it far from thee, Lord ! " came from one w^ho loved 
his Lord sincerely; but "Get thou behind me, Satan !" 
was the answer he received. When the Son of God is 
minded, of His own free will and His exceeding love 
towards our race, to come down from heaven, and in 
the form of a servant to explore all the secrets of our 
vile condition, it is more reverent in us to observe and 
love His condescension, than to say, out of some private 
text-book of morality, " This shall not be unto thee ! " 
The mystery of evil is far beyond our rules and meas- 
ures. There must be a cause when such a great act 
of condescension had to be done. But done it was; 
and when all the vials of wrath w^ere poured out upon 
His head, and when He did not shrink from receiving 
them, it is idle to discuss whether this shall be called 
wrath or love ; w^hen He smarted under all that we call 
punishment, it is idle to say that it must have another 
name. 

But you that are so jealous lest the name of sin 
should attach to the sinless One, carry the jealousy an- 
other step. When the Pharisees revile and the Priests 
entrap the Lord, and when the scourging, and the 
buffets, and the spitting mangle and defile His innocent 
frame, you think that nature itself should give tokens 
of indignation. And yet, how close to God sin has ever 
come! how sins have ever polluted and defiled the 
world, which is His temple ! and you have not con- 
ceived of the sins in that light, as sins that touch Him. 
When a man slays his brother, or pollutes the virtuo 
of a women, and each is dear to the Almighty Maker, 
does not the murderer smite God, and the betrayer spit 
upon Him? and the long-suffering Euler of the world 
boars, as in His bosom, all our wayward sins, and 
18* 



418 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIIL 

weaves them into the web of His providence, and con- 
trives an order of things in which these evil elements 
may work and not destroy. Jealous of the Son's con- 
tact with sin, can we not, by a larger reach of the same 
morality, conceive that the Father's contact with, and 
permission of sin, is a profound mystery? Can you 
not see in this fact a greater hideousness in evil, since 
every day that it is permitted seems to impugn the 
justice or the power of Him who could abolish every 
sin, with the doers of it, by the breath of His mouth ? 
If so, let us at least assent to the position that a disease 
so utterly past our comprehension may require means 
to cure it that shock the ordinary conclusions of our 
conscience ; and that a wider view, if we could stand 
high enough to take it, might correct oar crude im- 
pressions. 

6. The doctrine of Atonement is many-sided, as all 
mysteries are when we try to express them in the forms 
of human thought. And no doctrine has suffered so 
much, on the part both of friend and foe, from a one- 
sided treatment. "It has been said, that this doctrine 
represents the Almighty as moved with fury at the 
insults offered to His Supreme Majesty, as impatient to 
pour forth His fury upon some being, as indifferent 
whether that being deserves it or not, and as perfectly 
appeased upon finding an object of vengeance in His 
own innocent Son. It has been said, that a doctrine 
which represents the Almighty as sternly demanding a 
full equivalent for that which was due to Him, and as 
receiving that equivalent in the sufferings of His Son, 
transfers all the affection and gratitude of the human 
race from an inexorable Being, who did not remit any 
part of His right, to another being who satisfied His 
claim. It has been said, that a translation of guilt is 
impossible, because guilt is personal ; and that a doc- 
trine which represents the innocent as punished instead 
of the guilty, and the guilty as escaping by this punish- 
ment, contradicts the first principles of justice, subverts 
all our ideas of a righteous government, and, by hold- 
ing forth an example of reward and punishment dis- 



Essay VIIL] THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 419 

pensed by Heaven, without any regard to the character 
of those who receive them, does encourage men to live 
as they please."^ So the objections were summed up 
many years since, and there is little to alter after the 
recent controversy. Now, most of these objections 
have arisen from a crude and one-sided way of stating 
the doctrine on the part of its friends, and disappear 
when all the elements of the truth are taken in. Sin 
exists ; and therewith must enter a host of contradic- 
tions. Sin is that which turns the love of God into 
wrath ; not into the passion of wrath as men feel it, but 
to the intention of visiting with punishment. With sin, 
the face of God is altered against us and turned away. 
We know the theological objections to this mode of 
speaking, but there is no other open to us. God can- 
not change ; but yet His purpose towards us is changed 
in its workings by ourselves. And this enormous power 
all classes of Christians assign to sin, that it can dam 
up and divert the current of Divine love, that set so 
strongly towards us. We are obliged to pick our ex- 
pressions, whenever we touch the subject, lest sin itself 
should be laid to the accoimt of Him who is the gov- 
ernor of the world, and suffers sin in the world. Sin 
turns love to wrath, the life of our souls to the death 
of them, our light to darkness, our free adherence to 
God to enmity against Him. From this view of sin, as 
something wliich is suffered to thwart the free work- 
ings of God's love, and which casts shadows as of the 
darkness of Gethsemane over all the scenes of history, 
where evil is suffered to come in and overcloud the 
good, there is no escape except in the pantheistic view, 
which reads all sin and evil as good in a transition 
state. And -against that view conscience will ever pro- 
test ; for it is the best proof of our still retaining ves~ 
tiges of good that conscience finds all the suggestions 
of physiological materialists, and of metaphysical pan- 
theists, powerless to lull to sleep the sense of individual 
guilt, which yet she has so strong an interest in getting 

* Bev. Dr. Hill's Lectures, b. iv., ch. 3, quoted by Dr. Candlish. 



420 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 

rid' of. To remove sin and its consequences God sent 
His Son, the Eternal Word of the Father, to become 
truly man as He was truly God, and to mediate between 
men and Him for their relief. It is not true, whatever 
friend or foe shall say it, that God looked forth on His 
works to find some innocent man able and willing to 
bear the weight of His wrath, and found Jesus and 
punished Him. It is all false, because it is only half 
true. The Son of God took our nature upon Him, and 
therewith the sins of it, at least in their consequences ; 
not because He became one man among many, but be- 
cause when God takes man's nature He still has divine 
right and power over all, and so manhood is taken into 
God. That sinfulness should press upon the Son of 
God, in any of its consequences, revolts us at first ; nay, 
it was intended to revolt us and thereby to secure our 
repentance : and jealous for His honour we protest that 
of sin He shall know nothing. Yes : but we have been 
flaunting our sins in the face of the Father, to His dis- 
pleasure, ever since we were born ; using the limbs He 
makes and keeps strong, for pnrposes of lust and vio- 
lence; quickening the pulses that He controls, with 
draughts of passionate excitement : in a word, sinning 
before God's face and under His hand. Is it less shock- 
ing that sin should be in the world which is God's, than 
that it should be in the manhood which is Christ's ? 
No : both before and after the incarnation sin is a con- 
tradiction ; and it is less difficult to conceive sin taken 
by the Son upon Himself for a time and by way of 
remedy, than it is to understand it as suffered by the 
Father always as a permitted destruction. The punish- 
ment in this transaction falls on the innocent. And we 
are told that such a doctrine is cruel, unjust, and use- 
less : cruel, because it punishes where it could forgive ; 
useless, because it misses the true end of punishment 
in striking the guiltless, which can never deter from 
guilt ; and unjust, because it falls on one who knows 
no sin. But it is not cruel, if it thereby marks for ever 
the enormity of sin which needed such a sacrifice ; it is 
not useless, if it changed the relation of man to God» 



EssatVIII.] the death OF CHKIST. 421 

and if in fact it has ever since been turning men to 
holiness and " drawing all men imto " Jesus ;* and it is 
not unjust, because the Father's will to punish never 
outstripped the Son's to suffer, and because His death 
was a solemn offering of Himself in love, for man's re- 
demption. Nor can there be any tendency to transfer 
from the severe Father to the loving Son, the love we 
owe to both ; for the mode of our redemption was de- 
signed by both, and the Son adopts the Father's and 
the Father sanctions the Son's loving self-sacrifice. 
Eor is there the least pretext for saying that this doc- 
trine encourages men to live as they please, by holding 
forth the spectacle of rewards earned for those who do 
not deserve them and punishments warded off from 
those who deserve them well : since the blood of the 
Eedeemer, all-sufficient as it is to cleanse the sins of 
the world, saves from wrath only those who repent and 
turn to Him. The power of the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment has been felt wherever the Gospel has come. It 
has carried comfort to sinners where nothing else could 
do so. Wherever the conviction of sin has been deep- 
est, the power of the Cross has been most conspicuous ; 
and this in the face of objections which it was not left 
to modern times to suggest, against such a punishment 
for such a deliverer. Let it still be preached ; and our 
lesson from these controversies be that we preach the 
whole of it, so far as Scripture informs and our mind 
comprehends. Let us not so exalt the justice of God 
that we seem to record the harshness of a tyrant, and 
not the device of a Father seeking to bring His children 
back. Let us not so dwell on the love of Christ as to 
forget that one great moral purpose of this sacrifice 
was to set the mark of God's indignation upon sin. 
Let us not so offer the benefits of the Cross to our peo- 
ple as to lose sight of it as a means of their crucifying 
their own flesh and dying to their own sins. He bare 
our sins in His own body on the tree ; He is our ran- 
som, our propitiation ; He is made sin for us ; because 

* John xii. 32. 



422 ^II>S TO FAITH. [Essay Till. 

God is just. He laid down His life for the sheep, out 
of love, and God so loved the world that He gave Him 
for this labour ; because God is love : and w^e are to 
run with patience the race that is set before us, looking 
unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith ; be- 
cause the work of justice and love has restored us to 
our position of moral freedom and moral life, and we 
must live as the redeemed servants of our Lord. 



ESSAY IX. 

SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 



CONTEI^TS OF ESSAY IX. 



Sect. 1. The alleged vaeiation-s in 

THE InTEEPRETATION OF SCRIP- 
TUEE, p. 425. 

1. Introductory comments and defini- 

tions. 

2. Present attitudes and expectations. 

8. Amount of varying interpretations 
much exaggerated — as shown by, 
first. Ancient and modern versions ; 
seco7idly. Comparison of earlier and 
later expositions. 

4. Literal and historical mode of inter- 

pretation adopted from the first. 

5. EecapitulatioQ. 

Sect. 2. The Chaeacteeistics of Scrip- 
TIXEE, p. 445. 

6. Dilferences of interpretation in de- 

tails. 

7. This diversity in unity to be account- 

ed for— I. By the difference of the 
Bible from every other book. — II. 
By the fact that 'Scripture often in- 
volves more than one meaning: — as 
shown by (1) Applications of pro- 
phecy, (2) Types, (3) Deeper mean- 
ings, even in historical passages. — 
III. By the fact that Scripture is 
divinely inspired. 

8. Examination of the assertions of op- 

ponents concerning the Inspiration 
of Scripture, as regards, first, the 
Testimony of Scripture in reference 
to itself; secondly, the Statements 
of the Early Church ; thirdly, the 
Subjective testimony. 

9. Affirmative observations upon Inspi- 

ration — Considerations concerning, 



first, its Mode ; secondly, its Lim- 
its; thirdly, its Degree. 

10. Eecapitulation. 

Sect. 3. General Eules of Inteepee- 

TATI0>', p. 4S0. 

11. Preliminary comments— Duty of 

Prayer— JSTecessity for candour. 

12. Eules for the Interpretation of Scrip- 

ture. — 1st Eule — Interpret gram,' 
matically — Examples. 2nd Eule — 
Interpret historically — Examples. 
3rd UnlB— Interpret contextually — 
Examples. 4th Eule — Interpret 
, minutely— Exava'plea. Failure of 
these rules in cases of difiiculty. 
Gradual emergence of supplemen- 
tary rules. Sth 'Rnle— Interpret ac- 
cording to the analogy of faith. 

13. Concluding observations. 

Sect. 4. The Application of Sceiptitee, 
p. 513. 

14 Application of Scripture considered 
in reference to, I. Prophecy and 
Typology— II. Second and deeper 
meanings— III. Practical and spe- 
cial deductions. 

Sect. 5. Grammar and the laws of 
THE lettee, p. 522. 

15. Introductory remarks. 

16. General character of the language of 

the Xew Testament, as compared 
■with earlier and later Greek. 

17. Peculiarities as shown in details, es" 

pecially in reference to (1) the Arti- 
cle, (2) Substantives, (3) Yerbs, (4) 
Prepositions, (5) Particles. 

18. Conclusion. 



SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 



1. It can hardly be considered strange that great 
differences of opinion should exist respecting the inter- 
pretation of Scripture. When we consider the nature 
of the Sacred Writings, their number, their variety, the 
different epochs to which they belong, and the vast pe- 
riod of time over which they extend, we can hardly be 
surprised to find the opinions concerning the interpre- 
tation of the Volume into which they are collected not 
only to be various, but even conflicting. When we 
turn from the outward to the inward, and ponder over 
"that inexhaustible and infinite character" of the Sa- 
cred Writings, which even the better portion of our op- 
ponents are not unwilling to concede, — when we observe 
that " depth and inwardness," which, it has been rightly 
considered, require something corresponding in the in- 
terpreter himself, — when we reverentially recognize 
throughout the Volume references alike to the past, the 
present, and the future ; teachings in history only partly 
realised, lessons in prophecy " not yet learned even in 
theory," germs of truth which, w^e are told, have yet to 
take root in the w^orld, — when we consider all this, are 
we to wonder that differences of opinion exist concern- 
ing the interpretation of a volume so ancient, so won- 
drous, and so multiform ? 

It would indeed be strange if it had been otherwise ; 
it would be a phenomenon in the literary or mental his- 
tory of Christianity not easy to account for, if expound- 
ers of Scripture had been found always accordant in 
their views ; nay, it may even be considered a subject 
for surprise, though for thankfulness, that the difier- 



426 ^DS TO FAITH. [Essay IX 

ences of opinion abont tlie interpretation of a volume 
such as we have described are not greater than we find 
them to be. 

When, however, we are thus speaking of the differ- 
ences of opinion respecting the interpretation of Scrip- 
tm-e (and we are using the language of opponents), let 
us, from the very outset, agree to avoid all ambiguities 
in language. Let us be careful not to fall into an error 
which we may fairly impute to those with whom we 
are contending, — the error, to choose the mildest expres- 
sion, of using terms of a vague and undefined charac- 
ter, and, as the sequel will show, of a somewhat conven- 
ient elasticity. "What do we mean by differences re- 
specting the interpretation of Scripture? TTe may 
mean two things. Either we may mean that there 
have been differences of opinion about the meanings 
of the actual words of Scrii^ture, or we may mean that 
there have been differences of opinion about the man- 
ner in which those meanings have been obtained. We 
may include both if we choose in the same form of 
words, but in so doing let us not fail to apprise the 
reader, and in conducting the argument let us act with 
fairness. Let us be careful to recognize the clear logi- 
cal difference between these two meanings, and avoid 
that really culpable method of dealing with a momen- 
tous subject which does not scruple to mix up illus- 
trations or arguments derived from one of its aspects 
with those which really and plainly belong to the other. 
There may have been from the very first many methods 
of interpreting Scripture : allegory may have prevailed 
in one age, mysticism in another ; scholastic methods 
of interpretation may have been succeeded by rhetori- 
cal, and these again may both have given place to 
methods in which grammar and history may have 
borne a more prominent part. All this may have been 
.so, but it still does not necessarily follow that the mean- 
ings actually assigned to any given text have been as 
manifold or as discordant as the methods which may 
have been adopted to obtain them. The modes and 
principles of interpretation may have been very differ- 



Essay IX.J SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPEETATION. 427 

ent, and yet, in the main, tliey may have led to very 
accordant results. Such a probability, however, is now 
somewhat studiously passed over in silence, or men- 
tioned only to be dismissed as unworthy of serious con- 
sideration. The object, we fear, is to create anxiety 
and uneasiness, to unfix and to unloosen, to awaken a 
general feeling of distrust in current interpretations, 
and, in the case of doctrinal statements and every form 
of exposition that involves a reference to the analogy 
of faith, to arouse even hostility and antagonism. This 
has been done of late, as we have already implied, by 
a judicious combination of two methods of proceeding, 
— -on the one hand, by calling attention to the discord- 
ances of interpretation in a few extreme cases where 
such discordance is sure to be a maximum; on the 
other, by dwelling exclusively on the varieties of the 
diflferent systems and methods of interpretation, and 
leaving it to be inferred that the results arrived at are 
as various and diversified as the methods by which 
they have been obtained. In a word, such a phenom- 
enon as a Catholic interpretation, substantially the 
same under all systems but varied only in details or ap- 
plication, is assumed to be an exegetical impossibility. 
The true state of the case we are told is this, — that 
Scripture has had every possible variety of meaning 
assigned to it, that it has been understood to say this 
to one age and that to another, that all hitherto has 
been conflict or uncertainty. We learn, however, that 
now a better era is dawning ; that a fundamental prin- 
ciple, viz., that Scripture has one meaning and one 
meaning only, has at length clearly been made out ; 
and that a little "free-handling," a few assumptions, 
and a free use of a so-called " verifying faculty," will 
finally adjust all difficulties and discordances in the in- 
terpretation of the Book of Life. 

There is obviously something very attractive in all 
this. There is a fascination in the whole procedure 
that imperfectly disciplined or willingly sceptical minds 
find it impossible to resist. There is the charm of the 
alleged discovery that criticism at last has made, the 



428 ^^DS TO FAITH. [Essay IX 

attractiveness of the generalization, the yariety of the 
modes of applying the principle so as to meet all needs, 
^vhether of the reader, the preacher, the missionary, 
the teacher, or the interpreter, — and then the retro-, 
spect, the backward look of serene triumph over the ac- 
cumulated errors and prejudices of eighteen long Chris- 
tian centuries, all chased away by the brightness of this 
second Eeformation and the " burst of intellectual life" 
that is at last becoming visible above the clouded hori- 
zon of Scriptural interpretation. One topmost stone, 
and the monument of our exegetical successes must be 
pronounced complete. Philosophy and Theology claim 
of us, we are told, as of value to themselves a history 
of the past. Be it so. Let us take the pen of the his- 
torian and sit down and trace the record of our own 
mental supremacy in a history of the prejudices and 
errors of the Exegesis of the past. Let ns show by 
this tacit comparison how "great names must be ac- 
counted small," how few ever " bent their mind to in- 
terrogate the meaning of words," how men who were 
accounted benefactors of the human race have yet only 
left to us the heritage of erring fancies and party-bias, 
— let us write the history of all this littleness, confu- 
sion, and bondage to the letter, and the fabric of our 
own greatness, harmony, and intellectual freedom will 
appear by the contrast only the more stately and 
unique. 

Such is the dream of the present. Such, stated in 
no exaggerated or unkindly terms, is the course which 
men whose general goodness and high principles we 
have no cause to doubt or deny are now inviting us to 
follow. What are we to say of all this ? The comment 
rises to the lips, but we suppress it. "We may feel, per- 
haps, that as in Corinth of old so now in nineteenth- 
century England, vain knowledge may puff up, yet re- 
membering that " love edifieth," we sit by silent and 
wondering, even though the fire is kindling within, and 
silence is becoming a pain and a grief to us. At first 
perhaps we prepare to answer the call to join the wise 
and tranquil few. who, knowing that the Eternal Spirit 



EUSAYIX.] BCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 429 

has been ever present with the Church, and that wliat 
things were written aforetime were written, not for our 
contempt but for our learning, smile pensively at these 
childish exultations and straw-woven crowns, and see 
in them only one more of the premature triumphs, that 
have been claimed for some shifting form of the errors 
or heresies of the time. We feel tempted to join this 
quiet company, and calmly to smile as they alone can 
smile whose feet stand within the sheltering walls of 
the City of God, and whose faith is that which was not 
only delivered but handed down to the saints in each 
age of the Church of Christ. What can w^e do but 
smile, when we recognize old quibbles and difficulties 
all mustered up again, disguised in new trappings, and 
arranged in new combinations, — but yet the same, the 
very same that have been dispersed a hundred times 
over, and which the very generation to which we now 
belong will see dispersed again, though it may be to 
ally themselves finally with powers and principles of 
which at present they are only permitted to act as the 
scout and the courier? 

But w^ith this last thought the smile fades away. 
When we remember that the forms of error which of 
late have been reappearing among ns may belong, con- 
sciously or miconscioiisly. to the great apostasy of the 
future, — when we observe how they instinctively asso- 
ciate themselves with masked or avowed denyings of 
the Divinity of our blessed Lord, and of the full effi- 
cacy of His sacrifice, — when we mark how their vani- 
ties and self-confidences bear a strange family likeness 
to that Pelagian pride in the perfectibility of our cor- 
rupted nature which tears open the wounds of a cruci- 
fied Lord more heartlessly than the hands that first in- 
flicted them, — when we ponder over that pufied up and 
unyoked spirit of the day that is now calling on us to 
clear away the remains of dogmas and controversies, 
and when we see, as we must see, with a shudder, that 
it is but the harbinger of him who is to set himself 
against everything " that is called God or that is w^or- 
shipped " (2 Thess. ii. 4), — then it does seem our duty 



430 -^^^S "^^ FAITH. [Essay IX. 

to play our part in the great controversy, to quit our- 
selves like men, and to strive with all Christian ear- 
nestness, with stern brow yet with true and loving 
heart, to rescue the endangered souls of our own time 
and age, and to bring them back into the City of God. 
2. The position of the defender of the faith in the 
present day is that of one whose home and citizenship 
is in the City " that lieth four-square," whose builder 
and whose maker is God. The storm of battle has often 
raged round those massive walls, wild rout and turmoil 
have often striven to shake those solid gates. Pass- 
words have been tried ; treachery has played its das- 
tardly part, — but all stands firm and sure. The rising 
sun that smites on the broad front of those fair walls 
and towers, beholds them as stately in their strength 
and their beauty as they were ever of old ; .the shadows 
they cast when day declines are as many and as length- 
ened as they were of yore. Who within would wish 
to see a stone displaced, who would fain see one battle- 
ment laid low ? Perhaps none who are really and truly 
within the circuit of those sheltering walls. But there 
are voices without that we know full well, voices of 
those with whom we have dwelt as friends, whose God 
has been our God, and whose Lord has been our Lord, 
— men who went from among us on strange missions, 
and are come back to tell us strange tidings, and to 
bid us do strange deeds. That beleaguering host whose 
flaunting standards we can see on every wooded knoll 
around, and whose open or covert assaults our fathers 
and forefathers have experienced so often, and resisted 
so sucessfully and so long, — that motley eager host they 
tell us is not composed of foes but of friends and well- 
wishers, changed by civilization and the glory of hu- 
man development, eager to meet us as kindred and 
brothers if we will but remove the envious barriers 
that separate us, relics of a religious feudalism, as they 
term it, long passed away. Shall creeds separate 
brothers ? Shall doctrines divide those whom unity 
of race and shared civilizations plainly declare to be 
one and insepamble ? Shall we churlishly strive any 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION, 43 1 

longer to stint the growth, of the ideal man ? Shall 
the orient and glowing future be darkened with jealous- 
ies of sects and rivalries of religions ? " We are cou- 
riers," they impetuonsly cry alond ; " ambassadors, 
friends of both, friends of truth, friends of Christ. 
Unbar, then, these envious gates ; down with these un- 
friendly walls ; let us learn from each other the great 
lesson of mutual concessions, and so at last realize the 
great hope of the future, the fabled restitution of theo- 
logians, and at last, all in fraternal triumph, merge 
into the one great family of Truth and of Love." Such 
are the voices now sounding in our ears ; voices that the 
young and the generous, as well as the godless and the 
worldworn, give ear to with ready syinj)athy. But shall 
the true defenders of the ark of their God, that ark of 
the JSTew Covenant wherein lie the written words of 
life, yield it and themselves up to this stratagem which 
one " whose time is short" has put into the hearts of 
unconscious instruments? l^ever. God defend us 
from such fearful, such frantic disloyalty ! God indeed 
forbid that, in any sense, however modified, it should 
hereafter be the boast of the spirits of perdition, that 
it was with the City of the hills even worse than it 
was with a city of the plain, — that the host wound 
round it, that sounding brass brayed forth and eager 
voices shouted, and that, mined by traitorous occupants, 
wall and tower fell flat as those of Jericho, and fell 
never to rise again ! 

Such, it would seem, is the allegory of our own 
times — such no overdrawn picture of the exact atti- 
tude in which true believers now appear to stand. We 
are called upon by specious words to give up every 
defence which the mercies of God have permitted to be 
reared up around us ; and our reward is to be a bond- 
age, to which the bondage of the worst age of the 
Church of Rome would be found light and endurable. 
There is no bondage like that of scepticism. There is 
no intolerance more intolerable than that of those who 
are themselves the servants of a hard master. It may 
be a bondage different to bondages of the past in its 



432 ^^^S TO FAITH. [ESBAT IX. 

mode of being bronglit about, but it is no less complete 
and coercive. It is the bondage of contempt and of 
scorn. Do we donbt it ? Are there not writings of om- 
own times, writings that claim scholars and ministers of 
the Gospel for their authors, that show, onlj too pain- 
fiiUj, what we have to expect if we allow such to 
be leaders of thought among us, if wall and tower are 
to be thrown down to let such men come in and have 
the rule over us ? Granted that there may be numer- 
ous exceptions, that there may be those who, even 
while we are compelled to number them among our 
secret foes, we may be free to own have many kindly 
and elevated sympathies, — granted that there may be 
silver sounds heard amid all this clanging brass, yet 
does not common sense, does not history itself tell us, 
that the voices of this better part will be the first to be si- 
lenced ; that- their kindly idealisms will be rudely swept 
aside to make room for varied and repulsive forms of 
aggressive materialism ; that they will themselves be 
the earliest victims of the Frankenstein their own hands 
have helped to shape into existence ? Let the thought- 
ful reader pause only for a moment to muse upon some 
of the present aspects of modern society as revealed by, 
as commented on, and sometimes even as defended by, 
our public papers, and then answer to his own heart 
what he thinks must be the issue if laxity of religious 
thought seriously increase among us. Yice will borrow 
its excuses from scepticism ; lawlessness of act will be- 
come the natural sequel of lawlessness of thought ; and 
the end will be, no noble, colossal, heavenward-looking, 
ideal man, but a grovelling satyr, the slave of his own 
appetites, and the vassal of his own abominations. 

But we must pass on to, or rather return to, the sub- 
ject which lies more immediately before us. Enough, 
perhaps, has been said to show that there can be no 
safe compromise, no over-liberal parleying with those 
without, be they the kindliest or the most silver- 
tongued of the children of men. The believer of the 
present day must put himself in the attitude of an op- 
ponent, kind indeed it may be, and large in heart and 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUKE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 433 

sympathies, ready and anxious to rescue, prompt to 
spare, — yet an opponent ; one who, when asked to give 
lip old principles, may not, for the sake of others, 
wholly refuse to hear the nature of the demand, but 
who hears it with a full knowledge of the true attitude 
and posture of those by whom it is urged. We are 
asked especially to give up old principles in the inter- 
pretation of the "Word of God. Some concession, we 
are warned, is almost imperatively demanded. "We ask 
why. We bid our opponents state their reasons for a 
demand so sweeping and comprehensive. One of these 
reasons we have heard already, and we have already 
observed that it involves an ambiguity. We are told 
that the differences respecting the interpretation of 
Scripture are such that they show that prejudice rather 
than principle is the true mainspring of Scriptural 
exegesis. Pictures are held up to us of the successive 
schools of interpreters, their follies and their fallacies, 
their bondage to the influences of the age in which they 
lived, their hostility to all intellectual freedom. Be it 
so ; but is it proved that the interpretations which they 
actually advanced are as varied as their methods of 
procedure are so confidently alleged to be ? Whether 
a great deal too much has not been said even on this 
subject, whether the diversities or antagonisms of early 
systems of explaining Scripture have not greatly been 
exaggerated, is a question into which here we will not 
enter. Our inquiry is simply, whether the differences 
of interpretation are at all more than the nature and im- 
portence of the subject-matter would lead us to expect, 
and whether a great deal that has been said about the 
diff'erences of interpretation does not wholly belong to 
the differences of the modes of procedure. It is, of 
course, quite natural and conceivable that the spirit of 
each age may have swayed teacher and preacher more 
to this method than to that ; that passing controversies 
may have left their traces, and that declarations which 
seemed of great moment to one generation may not 
have been found equally so to another. All this may 
be so, but with this we are now only partially con- 
19 



434 -^^^S '^^ FAITH. [Essay IX. 

ceriied. If we were endeavouring to form an estimate 
of the variety of deductions that have been made from 
the words of Scripture in difierent ages of the Church, 
or were discussing the varying applications that the same 
sentiment has been found to bear, much that lias been 
said on the subject might pass unchallenged. We should 
probably account for these varied forms of application 
or deduction on different principles to our opponents ; 
we might see, for instance, in all this diversity of appli- 
cation only evidences of " the manifold wisdom of 
God," and of that hidden life with all its varying apti- 
tudes to human needs which we know to be in the 
"Written Word. Our opponents, on the contrary, might 
see in it only evidences of the folly, ignorance, preju- 
dice, or bad faith of successive expositors : we might 
differ widely in our manner of accounting for these 
different applications of Scripture, but we might to a 
great extent agree as to their number and variety. 
This, however, is not the question between us. What 
we are now told is not merely that the applications or 
adaptations of Scripture have been very varied, but 
that the difference of actual meaning assigned to the 
words of Scripture by expositors of different ages is so 
suspiciously excessive, that the duty of purging our 
minds from past prejudices is imperative, and that 
Scripture must henceforth be explained on sounder 
principles. The one true meaning must be discovered 
and adopted, the many disregarded or rejected, The 
first question between us, then, is a question of amount 
and of degree. Our opponents assert that Scripture 
has had so many meanings, often too so hostile and 
suicidal, that it presents one meaning to the French- 
man, another to the German, and another to the Eng- 
lishman. We are asked if this is not in itself an utter 
absurdity, and if it is not time to enter upon some more 
reasonable course. That assumed reasonable course is 
sketched out ; canons of interpretation are laid down ; 
appeals are not wanting to current prejudices ; disin- 
clination or inaptitude for that wrestling with the Word 
of God which nlarked earlier and better ages of the 



Essay IX.J 8CEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 435 

Chiircli is dealt gently with ; disregard of the great 
exegc^.tical writings of the past is not only excused but 
commended ; we are advised wholly to trust to our- 
selves, and are cheered by the assurance that " if we 
will only confine ourselves to the plain meaning of 
words and the study of their context," we may bene- 
ficially dispense with all the expository labours of the 
past or of the present. Such is the modern mode of 
dealing with one of the most momentous subjects of 
our own times, and with which personal holiness and 
man's salvation are more intimately connected than with 
any other that can be specified. Is it unfair to charac- 
terize the whole as nothing more than positive asser- 
tions, resting on ambiguities of language, or on the 
assumed identity of things logically difi'erent, and sup- 
ported by covert appeals to the idleness, vanity, and 
self-sufficiency of the day ? 

3. We revert, however, to the preliminary question 
before us. Are the differences of meaning that have 
been assigned to Scripture such in amount as they are 
said to be, and such as to demand the rehabilitation of 
Scriptural interpretation which is now proposed ? Are 
they such that, as it has been asserted, Scripture bears 
an utterly different meaning to men of different ages 
and nations? Assuredly not. l^o statement seems 
more completely at variance with our general Christian 
consciousness ; no assertion can more readily be dis- 
proved when we come to details. These, however, can 
never be made palatable to the general reader, nor are 
they commonly convincing, unless carried out much 
further than would be possible in an Essay of thi^ na- 
ture. To prove clearly and distinctly that there is not 
this great amount of discordance in the interpretations 
of Scripture, it would be necessary to compare, and that 
not in a few selected cases, but in a portion of Scripture 
of some length, the results arrived at by commentators 
of difi'erent ages and countries. Less than this would 
fail to convince ; for in the case of a few prerogative 
instances, which would be all we should have space for, 
the feeling is ever apt to arise that lists equally telling 



436 -^^^S '^^ FAITH. [EssATlX. 

and convincing could be made out on the other side. 
We have, therefore, as it would seem, little left us than 
to meet assertion by counter-assertion, and leave each 
reader to ascertain for himself on which side the truth 
lies, — whether the differences in the interpretations of 
Scripture (except in a comparatively few cases) have 
been thus excessive, or whether there has not been a 
very considerable amount of accordance in general 
matters, and variations only in details. Those who are 
acquainted with the subject, and have had experience 
in referring to expository treatises belonging to different 
ages and countries, will have no difficulty in pronounc- 
ing which is the true state of the case, and whether 
assertion or counter-assertion is to be deem.ed most 
worthy of credit. As, however, the general reader is 
not always likely to have it in his power to decide be- 
tween the two statements, and as the mere denial of the 
major in an opponent's syllogism is never satisfactory 
w^ithout some reasons being assigned, we will mention 
one or two general considerations which, though not 
amounting to a positive proof that Scripture has not 
been interpreted as diversely as has been asserted, may 
yet render it probable that such is the case, and supply 
some grounds for the counter-assertion above alluded to. 
In the first place, we may perhaps with justice ap- 
peal to the Ancient Versions, especially when combined 
with some of the best Modern Yersions, as tending to 
show that the amount of variety in interpretation is not 
so great as has been imagined. Let us take, for exam- 
ple, seven of the best Ancient Yersions of the I^ew 
Testament — the Syriac (Peshito), the Old Latin (as far 
as it has been ascertained), the Yulgate, the Gothic, the 
Coptic, the Ethiopic (Pell Piatt's), and the Armenian, 
and with them let us associate the Authorized English 
Yersion and Luther's German Yersion, and then pro- 
ceed to inquire what general opinion a comparison of 
the characteristics of these Yersions leads us to form as 
to the question of a prevailing unanimity, or a prevail- 
ing discordance, of interpretation, as far as it can be 
evinced by a Yersion. Now, admitting on the on-e 



E88i.TlX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 437 

hand that there may be such relations existing between 
some of these Versions, that each can hardly be consid- 
ered an independent witness, — that the Yulgate, for 
example, is but an amended form of the Old Latin, that 
the Ethiopic sometimes seems to indicate dependence 
on the Syriac, that the Armenian was retouched at a 
late period, and possibly that the Yulgate was in the 
hands of the reviser, — admitting all this, and making 
also a deduction for the influence of the Yulgate, and, 
perhaps, to some small extent, of the Syriac over the 
two Modern Yersions, we may still most justly point to 
these nine Yersions, of ages and countries so different 
and distant, as evincing an unanimity in their render- 
ings, not only of general but even of disputed passages, 
far beyond what could have been expected Oj jji'iori, or 
can in any way be accounted for by the admissions we 
have already made. If it be said this must necessarily 
be the case in Yersions which are all strictly literal in 
their character, these two remarks may be made by 
way of rejoinder: first, that the very fact that nine 
Yersions of different ages and countries should agree in 
this important feature, that not one of them should in 
any respect be paraphrastic,* and that some, as for in- 
stance the Old Latin, should almost be barbarous in 
their exactness, does seem to show that not only in later 
ages, but even in the earliest, the very letter of ScrijD- 
ture was regarded as of the utmost importance, and 
treated with the most scrupulous accuracy. Where 
Yersions were so punctilious, it does not seem natural 
to expect that interpretation would have been very wild 
or varied, except when it was allowed to degenerate 
into applications, or busied itself with minutiae and de- 
tails. Secondly, it may be added, that even the most 
literal Yersions involve interpretation in the fullest 
sense of the word, especially in the opinions they neces- 
sarily express on the connexion of clauses, and in the 
renderings of words of disputed meaning. A good 

* It may be noticed that we have specified the Ethiopic Version as that 
edited by Mr. Pell Piatt. The Ethiopic found in Walton's ' Polyglott' often 
degenerates into a paraphrase, especially in difficult passages. The Peshito 
is sometimes idiomatically free, but never paraphrastic. 



438 -^DS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

translation is often the very best of commentaries, and 
it ^as a full appreciation of this fact that led a ven- 
erated scholar and divine, when asked what he judged 
to be the best commentary on the Xew Testament, to 
name the Yulgate. The general unanimity of the early 
as well as later Yersions is thus a testimony, at any 
rate, of some little weight, in favour of the belief that 
the amount and degree of differences of interpretation 
in earlier, when compared with later ages, have been 
much overstated. 

Still it may be nrged, that whatever may be the 
case with Yersions, it is perfectly certain that, in the 
results at which commentators of different ages have 
arrived, there is a vast amonnt not only of variety but 
of antagonism. In reference to a certain number of 
difficult passages this may be true ; if, however, this be 
intended as a general statement reierring to Scriptural 
interpretation at large, it must be regarded as open to 
considerable doubt. Let ns endeavour to show this in 
the following way. It is said that there is an increas- 
ing agreement between recent German expositors, and 
it is also implied that the results at which they have 
arrived are far more consonant with truth than any that 
have preceded. Of these expositors, De TTette and 
Meyer are often mentioned with respect by modern 
writers. Let us agree to take them as two fair repre- 
sentatives of the exegesis of our own times. Let ns 
now go to a remote past, and choose two names to com- 
pare with them as representatives of the interpretation 
of a former day. Let us take for example Chrysostom 
and Theodoret. They belonged to an age sufficiently 
distant ; they shared in its feelings and sympathies ; 
they took part in its controversies. They were not 
specially in advance of their own times. One of them 
had, what many will judge to be not always compatible 
with calmness of interpretation, a strongly rhetorical 
bias ; the other did not escape some suspicion of heresy. 
Such as they were, or have been judged to be, let ns 
compare them, in some portion of Scripture (St. Paul's 
Epistles for example), on which all have written, with 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. ^gg 

the two modern commentators above specified, and 
state what seem to he the general results of the com- 
parison. "We naturally set out with the expectation of 
finding very great diversity. If all that has been said 
on this subject be true ; if the fourteen centuries which 
lie between the two pairs of men be as plentifully 
diversified as they are said to have been by changes in 
methods of interpretation, — changes, too, asserted to 
have been gradually leading us up to more perfect 
principles of interpretation, — we must expect to find a 
very great amount of discordance between them. Yet 
what do we discover when we actually institute the 
comparison ? To speak very generally, it would seem 
to be as follows. There w411 be found in the first place 
a considerable amount of variety in matters of detail, 
the older interpreters more commonly giving what may 
be termed an objective reference to words and expres- 
sions, where the two modern writers will be found 
agreeing to adopt a more subjective view. In the sec- 
ond place, differences will be observed in the treatment 
of doctrinal passages ; the older interpreters usually 
expounding them with reference to the great contro- 
versies of their own times, and to points of polemical 
detail ; the modern interpreters usually trying to gen- 
eralize, and not unfrequently to dilute and explain 
away, w^henever doctrinal statements appear to assume 
a very distinctive or definite aspect. In a word, the 
tendency of the two earlier writers is to what is objec- 
tive and special ; of the two later to what is subjective 
and general. These distinctions will certainly be ob- 
served, especially in the two departments above alluded 
to — matters of detail and matters of doctrine, and may 
perhaps be deemed sufficient to justify the recognition 
of some clear lines of demarcation between earlier and 
more modern interpretation. When, however, these 
points of diflerence are set aside, there will be found 
remaining in the great bulk of Scrij^ture, and in all 
general passages, an amount of accordance so striking 
and so persistent, that it can only be accounted for by 
the assumption that these four able expositors all in- 



440 ^^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

stiiictively recognized one common and sound principle 
of ScripUiral interpretation. The precise nature of that 
principle will become apparent as we advance fm-ther 
in our investigations. 

4. Believing that these remarks are just, and capa- 
ble of being fully substantiated, we may claim to have 
at least made it probable, that the extent of the alleged 
differences in the interpretation of Scripture between 
our own times and the past has been unduly exagger- 
ated. Here we might pause as far as the present por- 
tion of our subject is concerned. It may be well, how- 
ever, to take one step further, and show, what fairly 
can be shown, that from the very earliest times, the 
literal and historical method of interj)reting Scripture, 
now so often claimed as the distinguishing character- 
istic of our own times, has ever been recognized in the 
Church as the true method on man's side of interpret- 
ing the Oracles of God. On this subject, owing to the 
small amount of exact knowledge, even among more 
professed students, and to the currency which a few 
popular comments readily obtain among those whose 
acquaintance with these ancient writers must ever be 
second-hand, many questionable statements are allowed 
to pass unchallenged. It would, perhaps, seem hope- 
less to attempt to say one word in favour of the method 
of interpretation adopted by Origen, Every writer of 
the day uses that great name to illustrate what is to be 
regarded as wild and fanciful. And yet, what is the 
opinion which any real student of Origen's exegetical 
works would certainly give us ? "What, for instance, 
would be the statement of an unbiassed scholar who 
had thoughtfully read what remain to us of his com- 
mentaries on St. Matthew and St. John ? "Would he 
not tell us that in these portions of his works, whatever 
may have been his theories elsewhere, Origen rarely 
failed to give the first place to the simple and literal 
interpretation, and that his divergencies into allegory 
far more often deserve the name of applications than 
of actual expositions ? Allegory seems really and pri- 
marily to have commended itself to Origen as the 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 44^ 

readiest metliod of dealing witli those difficulties which 
his acute mind almost too, quickly recognized as tran- 
scending human reason and explanation. The remark- 
of one who has carefully read and well used one por- 
tion of his works — the expositor Liicke — is probably 
not wholly unjust, that a tendency to rationalize, of 
which Origen himself was unconscious, may to a great 
degree account for his bias to allegory and mystical 
modes of interpretation, whenever the difficulties of the 
passage seemed to rise above the usual level. Where 
there was no necessity for this, where there were no 
historical details which seemed at issue with human 
reason, or with received views of morality and justice, 
Origen shows plainly enough what metliod of inter- 
preting the Word of God he deemed to be the true and 
correct one. We may abundantly verify this from his 
extant writings. We may also further judge from frag- 
ments preserved in Catenae (his scattered comments, 
for example, on the Epistle to the Ephesians) what 
were really his leading principles ; and we may fairly 
ask if they were so very different from the principles 
of interpreting Scripture which all parties, friends and 
foes, seem now in the main agreed in regarding as 
reasonable and correct. 

We might extend these remarks almost indefinitely 
by discussing the true nature of the leading methods 
of interpreting Scripture — these methods which we are 
told are so strangely discordant — in the case of each 
one of the more distinguished expositors of different 
ages of the Church. We might show, for instance, 
that no amount of strong polemical bias prevented 
Cyril of Alexandria from expounding portions of Scrip- 
ture (the Gospel of St. John for example) with what, 
even'in our own critical days, must be called felicity 
and success. We might make it clear that the rhetor- 
ical turn of Chrysostom's mind never prevented him 
from fully discussing verbal distinctions, analysing the 
meanings of prepositions, estimating the force of com- 
pound forms, and so placing before his reader as calm, 
clear, and persuasive a view of the passage under coa- 
19* 



442 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

sideration as "we may find in the best specimens of 
modern interpretation. We might tnrn to the West, 
•and in spite of some growing disposition to admit 
more generally those studied distinctions in reference 
to threefold or fourfold senses of Scripture which Ori- 
gen bequeathed to his successors, we might still appeal 
to Augustine as a writer, whose special interpretations 
can never be spoken of without respect, and whose 
perceptions of the inner mind of Scripture, and of the 
true bearing of its deeper declarations, remain to this 
very hour unequalled for their perspicuity and truth. 
IS'ay, we might even show that the studied recognition 
of several senses in Scripture was rather a form of cijp- 
plication than of definite and genuine interpretation. 
we might even go onward, and pass into those ages 
which have become very bywords for perverted inter- 
pretation of Scripture — the ages of the earlier and later 
schoolmen — and even in them, amid subtile and narrow 
logic on this side, and a wild and speculative idealism 
on that, we should have no difficulty in showing that 
there was a via media of sound principles of interpreta- 
tion which was both recognized and proceeded on. It 
is perfectly true that at this period not only the earlier 
threefold and fourfold senses of Scripture were re-as- 
serted and re-applied, but that even sevenfold, eight- 
fold,* and, if we choose to press the words of Erigena, 
infinite senses of Scripture were admitted by mediaeval 
interpreters ; but it is also perfectly true and demon- 
strable, from passing comments and cautions, that the 
simple, plain, and literal sense was always admitted to 
be the basis, and that other forms of interpretation 
were commonly regarded more in the light of deduc- 
tions and applications. The rule laid, down by Aqui- 
nas was clear enough, and expresses fairly the general 
feeling of the interpreters of his own time, — " In omni- 

* The enumeration mav amuse the reader: (V) Sensus literalis re! his- 
toricns; (2'; allegoricus verparabolicns ; (-3) tropologicus vel etymologicus; 
(4) anagogicus vel analogicus ; (5) tvpicus vel exemplaris; (6) anaphoricus 
vel proportionalis ; (7) boarcademicus vel primordialis {i.e. quo ipsa piincipia 
rerum comparantur cum beatitudine sterna et tota dispensatione salutis) ; 
see Bihl. Max. Pair. torn. xvii. p. 315 seq. (Lugd. 1677). 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 443 

bus qu83 Scriptiira traclit, pro fundamento est tenenda 
Veritas liistorica, et desuper spirituales expositiones 
fabricand^" {Sum7na Theol. Pars. 1, Qu. 102, Art. 1): 
tbe literal and historical came first, the rest were forms 
of application. It is not, however, merely from pass- 
ing comments, or from asserted, but reallv neglected 
principles, but from the general tenor of the better ex- 
positions of the time that the full force of the above 
remarks will best be felt. Let a fair and intelligent 
reader consent to give a little time to some of the in- 
terpretations of difficult passages in St. Paul's Epistles 
as put forward by Lombard or Aquinas, and then tell 
US his impressions. "VYe will venture to state what his 
report would be, — that it was a matter of surprise to 
him, in an age which has ever been a very byv/ord for 
subtilties and pedantry, to find such a large amount of 
reasonable and intelligent interpretation of the Word 
of God. 

5. To gather up, then, our preceding comments, 
may we not fairly Qaj,— first, that much that has been 
said about the extent and variety of interpretations of 
Scripture is exaggerated ; secondly, that even the va- 
rious methods of interpretation — which, when it serves 
a purpose, our opponents regard as meaning the same 
as the results arrived at — may in many, perhaps most, 
cases be regarded as modes of applying or expanding 
the primary sense, rather than of eliciting substantive 
and independent meanings ; thirdly, not only that God 
has never left Himself without a witness, and that in 
every age there have been a few faithful representa- 
tives of faithful principles of interpretation, but fur- 
ther, that there has been from the very earliest times, 
not only in theory but in practice, a plain, literal, and 
historical mode of interpreting Scripture ; and finally, 
that there may be traced so great an identity in the re- 
sults arrived at by successive interpreters, that we have 
full warrant for using the term Catholic in reference to 
a far larger portion of what may be considered current 
orthodox interpretations than the mere popular dis- 
putant is at all aware of? Let the inquiry be put 



444 -^I^S ^^ FAITH. [EssATlX 

with all simplicity to those, whether in this country or 
abroad, who have made Ancient Yersions and exposi- 
tors their study, and, however different their opinions 
may be on other points, on this they will be agreed, — 
that there is such a conlordia discors in the results ob- 
tained, that in very many passages we can produce in- 
terpretations which may stand even the test of Yincent 
of Lerins, and may justly be termed the traditional in- 
terpretations of the Church of Christ. 

We know, of course, how these statements both 
have been and will be disposed of by the impatient and 
the confident. It will be said, jDrobably, that granting 
merely for the sake of argument, that there is that 
species of concord of interpretation in many important 
passages, it has been only the result of traditional prej- 
udices from which it is now our duty to make our- 
selves free. It will be added that any form of such 
consent is in itself suspicious, and that if our intuitions 
run counter to it we are at once to listen to the voice 
of reason within us, and reject the interpretation of 
every Church and every age of the world, if it does not 
approve itself to our own convictions. Brave and 
buoyant in our own self-esteem, we shall perhaps never 
pause to ask how far the so-called voice of reason may 
not be the voice of prejudice, — how far convictions may 
not be merely the results of secret influences within, 
and of some half-consciousness that what we reject 
bears aspects or involves conclusions sadly at variance 
with our habits or our propensions. We may at last 
perceive that it is the Word of God in its dreaded func- 
tion of searching the intents of the heart that is now 
being brought home to us, and in our yery dismay and 
perplexity we may have felt forced to come to the de- 
termination that every interpretation, be it of Church 
or of Council, that makes us thus tremble for ourselves, 
both must be and shall be either rejected or ignored. 
Thus, perhaps, will all that has been urged be disposed 
of. Be it so. There is a proud and confident spirit 
abroad ; there is a love of self, self in its more purely 
intellectual as]3ects, above measure painful and revolt- 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUKE, AND ITS INTERPKETATION. 445 

ing ; there are forms bearing the names of moral good- 
ness and freedom, and yet involving the denial of the 
essence of both, that bring an Apostle's predictions 
sadly and strangely to our thoughts, — and we feel it 
must be so, and that there are some whose ears must 
be and will be turned away from tiie truth. Yet there 
are others — especially the young, the ardent, the inex- 
perienced — to whom what has been thus far urged may 
not have been urged in vain. To them our arguments 
are mainly addressed, to them we are speaking, for 
them we are pleading. '' Young man, true in heart 
and earnest in spirit, honest searcher, anxious yet 
prayerful inquirer, let not thy eyes be holden by proud, 
unkindly hands, judge for thyself. Believe not every 
one that tells thee that the records of the Church are 
scribbled over with every form of strange, idle, and 
conventional interpretation of the Word of God. Judge 
for thyself, but judge righteous judgment. If there be 
fuller concords in the voices of the past than thou hast 
believed, close not thine ears to them because as yet 
they sound not fully harmonious to thee. Wait, ponder, 
pray : ere long, perchance thine own voice wall spon- 
taneously blend with what thou hearest ; thou thyself, 
by the grace of God, may at length hear sounding 
round thee, and by thine own experience make others 
hear with thee, the holy accords and harmonies of the 
deep things of the Word of God." 

§ 2. 

6. We now pass naturally onward to another por- 
tion, or rather to another, and that at first sight an op- 
posed, aspect of our present subject. Hitherto we have 
shown not only that the amount of the differences of 
interpretation has been clearly over-estimated, but even 
that the true and honest method of interpreting the 
Word of God — the literal, historical, and grammatical 
— has been recognized in every age, and that the re- 
sults are to be se-en in the agreement on numberless 
passages of importance that may be found in expositors 



446 -^^^^ '^^ FAITH. [Essay IX. 

of all periods ; in other ^vords, that the illiirainating 
grace of God has ever been with His Church. This 
being so, it is but waste of time to consider the causes 
that have been alleged for the existence of the multi- 
tude of interpretations, when that multitude has been 
proved to a great extent to be imaginary. We will not, 
then, pause to discuss the amount of varying interpreta- 
tions that have been ascribed, whether, on the one 
hand, to rhetoric and desires to edify, or, on the other, 
to party feeling and eiiorts to wrest the meanings of 
Scripture to different sides. We deny not that both 
have produced some effect on the interpretation of 
Scripture. We do not deny that the Christian preacher 
may have often urged meanings that do not lie in the 
words, and that these may have been adopted by con- 
temporaries and echoed and reproduced by those that 
have followed. We deny not, again, that the natural 
meaning of many texts may have been perverted by 
prejudice on one side or other, and that traces of this 
may still remain in some of the current interpretations 
of our own times. All this we deny not, but, on the 
other hand, we confidently assert that the effects have 
been limited, and that all the assumptions that the 
contrary has been the case fall with the fallen assump- 
tion, viz., that the discordance of Scripture interpreta- 
tions is excessive, and that all methods hitherto adopted 
have been uncertain or untrustworthy. 

But we now come to what at first sight may appear 
a reversed aspect of our subject. While, on the one 
hand, we consider it proved that there has been from 
the first a substantial agreement, not only in the mode 
of interpreting Scripture, but in many of its most im- 
portant details, we are equally prepared, on the other 
hand, to recognize the existence of great differences of 
opinion about the meanings of individual passages, and 
even in reference to the methods by which these mean- 
ings may be best obtained. No one who has had any 
experience in the interpretation of Scripture can with 
honesty assert the contrarj^ It may be true that in the 
great majority of all the more important passages care- 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATIOK 447 

ful consideration will show that what logic, grammar, 
and a proper valuation of 4he significance of words, 
seem to indicate as the principal and primary meaning 
of the passage, will be found to have been recognized 
as such ages before, and has substantially held its 
ground to our own times, — still experience teaches us 
that there is a very large residuum of less important 
passages in which interpreters break up into groups, 
and in which the expositor of the nineteenth century 
has to yield to the guidance of principles perhaps but 
recently recognized, yet, from their justice and truth, 
of an influence and authority that cannot be gainsaid. 
There are, indeed, even a few cases, but confessedly 
unimportant, where the modern interpreter has to op- 
pose himself to every early Version and every j)atristic 
commentator, and where it is almost certain he is right 
in so doing. Let the connexion of the concluding por- 
tion of Gal. iv. 12 be cited as an example. Such in- 
stances are, however, very rare, and need hardly be 
mentioned, save to show that principles can never be 
dispensed with, and that, though we yield all becoming 
deference to interpretations in which antiquity is mainly 
agreed, we yet by no means pledge ourselves unreserv- 
edly to accept them. All these diiferences, then, in 
the interpretations of individual passages, we frankly 
recognize; nay more, we may in many cases admit 
that there are clearly defined differences in the method 
of interpreting — perhaps an extended context. Last 
of all, it is not to be suppressed that there is a some- 
what large class of passages so far-reaching, so inclu- 
sive, and so profound, that not only are all the better 
interpretations remarkable for their varied character, 
but for their appearing, perhaps each one, to represent 
a portion of the true meaning, but scarcely, all of them 
together, what our inner soul seems to tell us is the 
complete and ultimate meaning of the words that meet 
the outward eye. 

7. We are thus admitting the existence of diversity 
of interpretation, especially in individual passages and 
details, as readily and as frankly as we have argued for 



448 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay tX. 

the existence of a far greater prevailing unity both in 
the meanings themselves, and the methods of arriving 
at them in all more important passages, than is willingly 
recognized by popnlar writers. The qnestioTi then na- 
turally arises, how do we account for these apparently 
reversed aspects? How can we in the same breath 
assert prevailing unity, and yet admit diversity ? How 
do we account for a state of things which in Sophocles 
or Plato w^ould be pronounced incredible or absurd? 
Our answer is of a threefold nature. We account for 
this by observing. First, that the Bible is different to 
every other book in the world, and that its interpreta- 
tion may well be supposed to involve many difficulties 
and diversities. Secondly, that the words of Scripture 
in many parts have more than one meaning and appli- 
cation. Thirdly, that Scripture is inspired, and that 
though written by man, it is a revelation from God, 
and adumbrates His eternal plenitudes and perfections. 

On each one of these forms of the answer we will 
make a few observations. 

I. On the first, perhaps, little more need be said 
than has been incidentally brought forward in earlier 
parts of this Essay. It is, indeed, most unreasonable 
to compare, even in externals, the Bible with any other 
book in the world. A collection of many treatises, 
written in many different styles, and at many different 
ages, can never be put side by side with the works of 
a single author, nor will any canons of interpretation 
which may be just and reasonable in the latter case, be 
necessarily applicable to the former. What, for in- 
stance, can really be more strange than to lay down 
the rule that we are to interpret the Scripture like any 
other book, when, in the merest rough and outside 
view, the Scripture presents such striking differences 
from any book that the world has ever seen? The 
strangeness becomes greater when we look inward, and 
observe the varied nature of the contents, — prose and 
poetry, history and prophecy, teachings of an incarnate 
God, and exhortations and messages of men to men. 
How very unreasonable to insist on similar modes of 



Essay IX.] 8CEIPTUKE, AND ITS INTERPEETATION. 449 

interpreting what onr very opponents rightly term " a 
world by itself" — a world'from which foreign influences 
are to be excluded — and any other documents or rec- 
ords that have come from the hand of man ! How 
can we with justice require that amount of exegetical 
agreement in the former case that might naturally be 
looked for and demanded in the latter? How very 
reasonable, on the other hand, is the supposition that, 
in the interpretation of a collection of treatises of such 
varied and momentous import we may have to recog- 
nize both unities and diversities, — unities as due to the 
illuminating grace of the one and self-same Spirit 
similarly vouchsafed to all meek and holy readers of 
Scripture in every age of the Church, — diversities as 
due to the profundity and variety that must ever mark 
the outpourings of the manifold wisdom of God ! It 
seems, indeed, idle to dwell upon wdiat is thus obvious 
and self-evident ; but it has been rendered necessary 
by what we are obliged to term the unfairness of our 
opponents. At one time, when the argument seems to 
require it, the Scripture is considered as a single book, 
to be dealt with like other books, subject to the same 
critical canons, amenable to the same laws of interpre- 
tation : at another time it emerges to view as a collec- 
tion of records, unconnected and discordant, which it 
is desirable to keep thus divided, that they may be the 
more readily disposed of; and, wdienever it may seem 
necessary, the more successfully pitted against one an- 
other in contradictions and antagonisms. 

n. We pass onward to our second form of answer. 
Here we find ourselves, as might have been foreseen, 
in undisguised conflict with the sceptical w^riters of 
our own time. That Scripture has one meaning, and 
one meaning only, is their fundamental axiom : it is 
seen to be, and felt to be, one of the keys of their posi- 
tion. When, however, we pause to ask how that one 
meaning is to be defined, we receive answers that^are 
neither very intelligible nor consistent. If we are told 
that it is " that meaning which it had to the mind of 
the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote, 



450 ^il^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

to the hearers or readers who first received the mes- 
sage," we may justly protest against an answer involv- 
ing alike such assumptions and such ambiguities. What 
right have we to assume that the speaker knew the full 
meaning which his own words might subsequently be 
found to bear ? A very little reflection will show the 
justice of this query. What right, again, have we to 
assume that the meaning which the Prophet or Evan- 
gelist designed to convey was identical with that which 
the hearers or readers who first received the message 
conceived to be conveyed in its words ? Assuming 
even that it was so, how are we to arrive at this one 
meaning common to hearer and speaker ? How are 
we to recognize it, when the words before us may bear 
two or more meanings, each, perhaps, equally probable 
and supported by arguments of equal validity ? It 
will be said that this is precisely the duty of the Inter- 
preter ; that it is for him to disengage himself from the 
trammels of the present, and free from the bondage of 
prejudices and creeds to transport himself back into the 
I)ast, to mingle in spirit with those who first heard the 
words, to feel as they felt, to hear as they heard, to 
recover the one, the true, and the original meaning, 
and to bring it back to the hearer or reader of our own 
times. All this is high-sounding and rhetorical ; it is 
sure to attract the young and the enthusiastic, and by 
no means ill-calculated to -excite and delude the inex- 
perienced. BiTt it is rhetoric, and nothing more. JSTo 
one who has had genuine experience in the interpreta- 
tion of Scripture would hesitate to pronounce such 
" magnifyings of an ofiice " as comi^letely delusive, if 
even not deserving the graver term, mischievous. 
Delusive they certainly are, because all this self-pro- 
jection into the past is in reality, and ever has been, 
unostentatiously practised by all better interpreters — 
by all who have sought with humility and earnestness 
to catch the- spirit and mind of the writer whom they 
are striving to expound. All this has been practised, 
almost from the first. Chrysostom spoke of it, Augus- 
tine commended it, and yet what has been the, result 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEErRETATION. 452 

of experience ? Why, that passage after passage has 
been found to be so pregnant with meaning, so mys- 
teriously full, so comprehensively applicable, that the 
most self-confident interpreter in the world could 
scarcely be brought to declare his complete conviction 
that the one view out of many whicli he may have 
adopted was certainly the principal one, much less that 
it was the only meaning of the words before him. 

But to give up such attitudes of delusive self-con- 
fidence, and to return to modesty and reason, we may 
now proceed to illustrate our first assertion, that Scrip- 
ture has frequently more than oi^e meaning, by refer- 
ences to three particulars in which this is very clear- 
ly exemplified, — double meanings, or applications of 
prophecy, types, and deeper senses of simple histor- 
ical statements. A few remarks shall be made on each. 

(1.) On the first so much has been said of late that 
it might almost seem pure knight-errantry to undertake 
the advocacy of what (we are told) ought now to be re- 
garded as a mere outworn prejudice. And yet what is 
more thoroughly consonant w^ith reason, and, w^e might 
almost add, experience, than such a belief? We say 
experience, — for there must be few calm observers of 
the course of events around them who can fail to have 
been struck with the curious re-appearance, under un- 
likely circumstances, of former combinations, and who 
have not occasionally been almost startled by the re- 
currence of incidents in relations and connexions that 
could never have been reasonably expected again. It 
does not seem too much to say that in many instances 
nations and individuals alike seem moving as it were 
in spirals, constantly returning, not exactly to the same 
point, but to the same bearings and the same aspects, — 
not precisely to a former past, but to a present that 
bears to it a very strange and wholly unlooked-for 
resemblance. If this be true in many things that fall 
under our own immediate observation (and very unob- 
servant must he be who has not often verified it for 
himself), if we often seem to ourselves to recognize this 
principle of events becoming in many respects doubles 



452 ^^^^ 'TO FAITH. [Essay IX 

of each other, and that not only in minor matters, but 
even in circumstances of some historical importance, — 
if this be so, is it strange that in the spiritual history 
of our race there should be such parallelisms ; that 
words apparently spoken in reference to a precursory 
series of events should be found to refer with equal 
pertinence to some mysteriously similar combinations 
that appeared long afterwards ? Are we to think that 
counsels sealed in silence from eternity, that purposes 
of the ages formed before the worlds were made, that 
dispensations of love and mercy laid out even before 
the objects for whom they were designed had come 
into being, were not over and over agaiir reflected, as 
it were, in the history of our race, and that the events 
of a former day were not often bound in mystical like- 
nesses and afS.nities with the events of the future by 
that principle of redeeming love which permeated and 
pervaded all ? Unless we are prepared plainly to 
adopt some of the bleakest theories of the scepticism 
of these later days ; unless we are determined to find 
civilization and development and not God in history ; 
unless we have resolved to see in the Gospel no fore- 
ordered dispensation, but only a system of morality, 
unannounced, unforeshadowed, as strange in its isolated 
and excej)tional character as it has been strange in its 
effects, — then, and then only, can we consistently deny 
the likelihood and probability of God's purposes to the 
world having imparted to events seemingly remote and 
unconnected, and to issues brought about by varied 
and dissimilar circumstances, real and spiritual resem- 
blances. Then only can we justly deny that the word 
of prophecy might truly, legitimately, and consistently 
be considered to refer as well to earlier as to later 
events, wherever such resemblances could be reason- 
ably demonstrated to exist. 

To illustrate the foregoing comments by an exam- 
ple, let us take an instance which our opponents are 
never wearied with bringing forward, — our Lord's 
prophecy relative to the fate of Jerusalem and the end 
of the world. Here it is said that the system of first 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEKPEETATION. 453 

and second meanings, which we are now defending, is 
most palpably nothing whatever else than an attempt 
to help out the verification and mitigate the incohe- 
rence of a somewhat confused and partially unrealized 
prophecy. Now, in disposing of this idle but painfully 
familiar comment, we will make no allusion to the ques- 
tion of the four Apostles, which, it may be observed, 
necessitated in the answer reference to the end of the 
world as well as to the end of the Theocracy (Matt. 
xxiv. 3) ; we will only take the prophecy as we find it, 
with its mingled allusions to a near and to a remote 
future, and simply inquire whether there is any such 
resemblance, spiritual or otherwise, as might make ex- 
pressions used in reference to the one almost inter- 
changeably applicable to the other. Who can doubt 
what the answer must be ? Who that takes into con- 
sideration the true significance of the fall of Jerusalem, 
who that sees in it, as every sober reader must see, not 
merely the fall of an ancient city, but the destruction 
of the visible seat of Jehovah's worship, the enforced 
cessation of the ancient order of things, the practical 
abrogation of the Theocracy, — all closely synchronous 
with the Lord's first coming, — who is there that will 
take all these things fairly into consideration and not 
be ready to acknowledge resemblances between the 
end of the fated city and the issues of the present dis- 
pensation, sufficiently mysterious and sufficiently pro- 
found to warrant our even alternating between them 
(we use the studiedly exaggerated language of oppo- 
nents) the verses of the Lord's great prophecy ? Till it 
can be shown that the course of things is fortuitous, 
that providential dispensations are a dream, and the 
gradual development of the counsels of God a conven- 
ient fiction — till it can be made clear to demonstration, 
that there are no profound harmonies in the Divine 
government, no mystical recurrences of foreordered 
combinations, no spiritual affinities between the past 
and the present, no foreseen resemblances in epochal 
events, and no predestined counterparts, the ground on 
which the reasonable belief in double meanings and 



.454 ^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

double applications of prophecy has been rightly 
judged to rest will remain stable and unshaken; the 
perspective character that has been attributed to Scrip- 
tural predictions will still claim to be considered no 
idle or unreal imagination. 

(2.) The subject of ti/2?es has been much dwelt upon 
by modern writers, and in most cases with singular un- 
fairness. The popular mode of arguing on this subject 
is to select some instances from early Christian writers 
which are obviously fanciful and untenable, to hold up 
the skirts of their folly, to display their utter nakedness, 
and then to ask if a system of which these are examples 
either can or ought to be regarded with any degree of 
favour or confidence. If Justin tells us that the king of 
Assyria signified Herod, and Jerome was of opinion 
that by Chaldceans are meant Demons, if the scarlet 
thread of Rahab has been deemed to have a hidden 
meaning, and the number of Abraham's followers has 
been regarded as not wholly without significance, we 
are asked whether we can deem the whole system 
otherwise than precarious and extravagant, whether we 
can at all safely attribute to the details of the Mosaic 
ritual a reference to the I^ew Testament, or really be- 
lieve that the passage of the Eed Sea can be very cer- 
tainly considered a type of baptism. The ultimate de- 
sign of this mode of arguing will not escape the intelli- 
gent reader ; — it is simply an endeavour by slow sap 
to weaken the authority of some of the writers of the 
l^ew Testament, and to leave it to be inferred that our 
Lord Himself, in recognizing and even giving sanction 
to such applications of Scripture (Matt. xii. 40, John 
iii. 14 ; comp. ch. vi. 58), either condescended to adopt 
forms of illustration which He must have felt to be un- 
trustworthy, or else really in this did not rise wholly 
above the culture of His own times. E'ow at present, 
without at all desiring to press what we have not yet 
discussed — the inspiration of Scripture — we do very 
earnestly call upon those who are not yet prepared 
wholly to fling off their allegiance to Scripture, to bear 
in mind the following facts : — (a) That our Blessed 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTURE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 455 

Lord Himself referred to the Brazen Serpent as typical 
of His being raised aloft, and that He illustrated the 
mystery of His own abode in the chambers of the earth 
by an event of the past which He Himself was pleased 
to denominate as a sign, — the only sign that w^as to be 
vouchsafed to the generation that then was seeking for 
one ; (h) that the "Evangelists recognize the existence 
and significance of types in reference to our Lord (Matt. 
ii. 15 ; John xix. 36); {c) that the teaching of St. Paul 
is pervaded by references to this form of what has been 
termed " acted prophecies " (Rom. v. 14 seq. ; 1 Cor. v. 
7, X. 2 seq. ; Gal. iv. 24: seq. ; Col. ii. 11) ; {d) that the 
greater part of the Epistle to the Hebrews is one con- 
tinued elucidation of the spiritual significance of the 
principal features of the Levitlcal law: its sacrifices, 
rites, and priests were all the shadows and typical re- 
semblances of good things to come (Heb, x. 1) ; {e) that 
St. Peter -plainly and distinctly declares that the water 
of the Flood is typical of baptism (1 Pet. iii. 21) ; {/) 
that in the last and most mysterious revelation of God 
to man the very realms of blessedness and glory are 
designated by a name and specified by allusions (Rev. 
xxi. 22) which warrant our recognizing in the Holy 
City on earth, the "Jerusalem that now is," a type of 
that Heavenly City which God hath prepared for the 
faithful (Heb. xi. 16), a similitude of the Jerusalem that 
is above, a shadow of the incorruptible inheritance of 
the servants and children of God, 

When we dwell calmly upon these things, when we 
observe further how, not only thus directly and explic- 
itly, but how, also, indirectly and by allusion, nearly 
every writer in the New Testament bears witness to 
the existence and significance of types, how it tinges 
their language of consolation (Rev. xxi. 2 seq.), and 
gives force to their exhortations (Heb. iv. 14) ; when 
we finally note how^ the very Eternal Spirit of God, by 
whom they were inspired, is specially declared to have 
vouchsafed thus to involve in the ceremonies of the 
past the deep truths of the future (Heb. ix. 8), — wdien 
we calmly consider the cumulative force of all these 



456 "^I^S '^0 FAITH. _ [Essay IX. 

examples and all tliese testimonies, vre may perhaps 
be induced to pause before we adopt the sweeping 
statements that have been made in reference to the 
whole system of typologj. We may admit that types 
may have been often injudiciously applied, that it may 
be difficult to fix bounds to their use or to specify the 
measure of their aptitude, and yet we may indeed se- 
riously ask for time to consider whether such recogni- 
tions of the deeper meanings of Scripture thus vouch- 
safed to us, and thus sanctioned by our Lord and His 
Apostles, are to be given up at once because they are 
thought to come in collision with modern views of 
Scripture and modern canons of interj^retation. Our 
opponents may well be anxious to get rid of the whole 
system of types ; we can understand their anxiety, we 
can even find reasons for the sort of desperation that 
scruples not to represent what was once sanctioned by, 
our Lord and His Apostles as now either mischievous 
or inapplicable. It is felt that if typology is admitted, 
the assertion that Scripture has but one meaning is in- 
validated. It is seen clearly enough that if it can be 
shown, within any reasonable degree of probability, 
that the details of a past dispensation were regarded 
by the first teachers of Christianity as veritable types 
and symbols of things that had now come, then the re- 
cognition of further and deeper meanings in ScrijDture, 
of secondary senses and ultimate significations, must 
directly and inevitably follow, and the rule that the 
Bible is to be interpreted like any other book at once 
be shown to be, what it certainly is, inapplicable. ISTeed 
we wonder then that every effort has been made to de- 
nounce a system so obstructive to modern innovations ; 
need we be surprised that the rejection of what is thus 
accredited has been as persistent as it would now seem 
proved to be both unreasonable and without success ? . 
(3.) Our third subject for consideration, the existence 
of deeper meanings in Scripture, even in what might 
seem simple historical statements, follows very natural- 
ly after what has been just discussed. Here again we 
can adopt no more convincing mode of demonstration 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 45(7 

than is supplied by an appeal to Scripture. Yet we 
may not unprofitably make one or two preliminary 
comments, hi the first place, is not this assertion of a 
oneness of meaning in the written words of an intelli- 
gent author open to some discussion ? Is it at all clear, 
even in the case of uninspired writers, that the primary 
and literal meaning is the only meaning which is to be 
recognized in their words ? Is it so wholly inconceiv- 
able that more meanings than one may have been actu- 
ally designed at the time of writing, and that, conjoint- 
ly with a leading and primary meaning, a secondary 
and subordinate meaning may have been felt, recog- 
nized, and intended? ]N ay, can we be perfectly cer- 
tain that even words may not have been specially or 
instinctively chosen which should leave this secondary 
meaning fairly distinct and fairly recognizable? It 
would not be difficult to substantiate the justice of 
these queries by actual examples from the writings of 
any of the greater authors whether of our own or some 
other country. Still less difficult would it be to show 
that in very many passages meanings must certainly be 
admitted which it may be probable were not intended 
by tlie writer, but which nevertheless by their force and 
pertinence make it frequently doubtful whether what 
has been assumed to be the primary meaning of the 
words is really to be deemed so, and whether what, is 
judged to be an application may not really represent 
the truest aspects of the mind and intentions of the 
author. 

Let us add this second remark, that the instances 
in which words have been found to involve meanings, 
not recognized at the time by reader or by writer, but 
which after-circumstances have shown were really to 
be regarded as meanings, are by no means few or ex- 
ceptional. The whole group of illustrations supplied 
by " ominata verba," the whole class of cases which 
belong to that sort of unconscious prescience which is 
often found in minds of higher strain, the various in- 
stances where glimpses of yet undiscovered relations 
have given a tinge to expressions which will only be 
20 



458 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IS 

fnllj understood and realized when those relations are 
themselves fully known, — all these things, and many 
more than these, might be adduced as illustrative of 
the deeper meanings that are often found to lie in the 
words of mere uninspired men. Such meanings neither 
they nor their own contemporaries may have distinctly 
recognized, but meanings they are notwithstanding ; 
not merely applications or extensions, but meanings 
in the simple and regular acceptation of the term. 
How this is to be accounted for, we are not called upon 
to show. We will not speculate how far the great and 
the good of every age and nation may have been moved 
by the inworking Spirit of God to declare truths of 
wider application than they themselves may have felt 
or realized ; we will not seek to estimate the varying 
degrees of that powder of partially foreseeing future 
relations which long and patient study of the past and 
the present has sometimes been found to impart. All 
such things are probably beyond our grasp, and would 
most likely be found to elude our present powers and 
present means of appreciation. With reasons we will 
not embarrass ourselves ; we will be satisfied with sim- 
ply calling attention to the fact that the existence of 
such phenomena as that of words having deeper and 
fuller meanings than they were understood to have at 
first is not only not to be denied, but may even be 
deemed matter of something more than occasional ex- 
perience. 

The two foregoing observations will, perhaps, have 
in some measure prepared us for forming a more just 
estimate ,of the further and second meanings that have 
been attributed to the words of Scripture. If it be 
admitted that some of the phenomena to which we have 
alluded are occasionally to be recognized in purely 
human writings, is it altogether strange that in a reve- 
lation from God the same should exist in fuller measures, 
and under still clearer aspects ? If the many-sidedness, 
mobility, and varied powers of combination existing 
in the human mind, appear at times to invest words 
written or spoken with a significance of a fuller and 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 459 

deeper kind than may at first be recognized, are we to 
be surprised if something similar in kind, but higher 
in degree, is to be observed in the language of Holy 
Scripture ? Is the Divine mind not to have influences 
which are conceded to the human ? Are the words 
of Prophets or Evangelists to be less pregnant in mean- 
ing, or more circumscribed in their applications, than 
those of poets and philosophers ? Without assuming 
one attribute in the Scripture beyond what all our 
more reasonable opponents would be willing to concede, 
without claiming more for it than to be considered a 
revelation from God, a communication from the Divine 
mind to the minds and hearts of men, we may justly 
claim some hearing for this form of the d ^rioi'i argu- 
ment ; we may with reason ask. all fair disputants whether 
they are prepared positively to deny, in the case of a 
communication directly or even indirectly from God, 
the probability of our finding there some enhancement 
of the higher characteristics and more remarkable phe- 
nomena that have been recognized in communications of 
man to men ? 

When we leave these a priori considerations, and 
turn to definite examples and illustrations, our antici- 
pations cannot be said to have disappointed us. We 
have really an affluence of examples of second and 
deeper meanings being deliberately assigned to pas- 
sages of Scripture that might have been otherwise 
deemed to have only the one simple or historical mean- 
ing that seems first to present itself. Let us select two 
or three instances. Is it possible to deny that our Lord 
Himself discloses, in what might have been deemed a 
mere title of Jehovah under His aspects of relation to 
favoured worshippers, a meaning so full and so deep 
that it formed the basis of an argument (Matt. xxii. 31 
seq. ; Mark xii. 24 seq. ; Luke xx. 37 seq) 'i The famil- 
iar titular designation is shown to be the vehicle of a 
spiritual truth of the widest application ; the apparently 
mere recapitulation of the names of a son, a father, and 
a grandfather, in connexion with the God whose ser- 
vants they were, and whom they worshipped, is not 



460 -^^^ '^^ FAITH, [Essay IX. 

only nrged as proving a fundamental doctrine, but is 
tacitly acknowledged to have done so by gainsay ers 
and opponents (Lnke xx. 39). And furtlier, let it be 
observed, that it is clearly implied that tbis -was no 
deeply-bidden meaning, no profound interpretation, 
•wbicli it might require a special revelation to disclose, 
but that it was a meaning which really ought to have 
been recognized by a deeper reader, — at any rate that 
not to have done so argued as plain an ignorance of 
the Written "Word as it did of the power and opera- 
tions of God (Matt. xxii. 29). Let this really ^'preroga- 
tive " example be fairly considered and properly esti- 
mated, and then let it be asked if the existence of deeper 
meanings in Scripture can consistently be denied by 
any who profess a belief in our Lord Jesus Christ. It 
seems to us that this is a plain case of a dilemma : 
either with Strauss and Hase we must regard the argu- 
ment as an example of Eabbinical sophistry, — and so, 
as Meyer reminds us, be prepared to sacrifice the char- 
acter and dignity of our Lord, — or we must admit that, 
in some cases at least, there is more in Scripture than 
the mere literal sense of the words. 

Such an example opens the way for the introduction 
of others, which, without this prerogative instance, could 
not have been strongly urged, except on assumptions 
which, in our present position in the argument, it would 
not be logically consistent to make. By being associ- 
ated, however, with the present examj)le, they certainly 
seem to be of some force and validity in confirming our 
present assertion, and, to say the very least, can be 
more easily explained on that hj-pothesis than on any 
other that has yet been assigned. Let us specify Matt, 
ii. 15. Isow the question presents itself in the follow- 
ing form : — Is not this an example furnished by the 
Apostle of what we have already seen must be recog- 
nized in an example vouchsafed by his Lord ? Is not 
this a case of deeper meaning ? Do not the words of 
Hosea, the second meaning of which was doubtless not 
more apparent even to the prophet himself than it was 
to his earlier readers, seem only to have a simple his- 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERrRETATION. 4gi 

torical reference to the earthly Israel ? and yet do they 
not really involve a further and typical reference to 
Him who was truly and essentially what Israel w:as gra- 
ciously denominated (Exod. iv. 22 ; comp. Jerem. xxxi. 
9), and of whom Israel was a. type and a shadow ? So, 
at any rate, St. Matthew plainly asserts. Which, then, 
of these hypotheses do we think most probable, — -that 
St. Matthew erroneously ascribed a meaning to words 
which they do not and were not intended to bear, that 
the two chapters are an interpolation (for such an hypo- 
thesis has been advanced), or that they supply an in- 
stance of a second and typical meaning in words of a 
simply historical aspect, and that a truth is here disclosed 
by an Apostle similar to what we have already seen 
has been clearly disclosed by our Lord ? 

Let us take yet another, and that, as it might be 
thought, a very hopeless instance. St. Paul, in his 
Epistle to the Ephesians (ch. iv. 8), not only makes a 
citation from a Psalm, which at the part in question 
appears to have a simple historical reference to some 
event of the time (perhaps the taking of Rabbah), but 
even alters the words of the original, so as to make its 
application to our Lord more pertinent and telling. 
What are we to say of such a case ? Does it not really 
look like an instance of almost unwarrantable accom- 
modation ? Does it not seem as if we had now fairly 
fallen upon the point of our own sword, and that, in 
citing an example of a second meaning, we had unwit- 
tingly selected one in which the very alteration shows 
that the words did not originally have the meaning now 
attributed to them ? Before we thus yield, let us at 
any rate state the case, and leave the fair reader to form 
his own opinion. Without at present assuming the 
existence of any influence which would have directly 
prevented the Apostle from so seriously misunder- 
standing and so gravely misapplying a passage of the 
Old Testament, and only assuming it as proved that 
there is one authentic instance of words of Scripture 
bearing a further meaning than meets the eye, we now 
ask which is to be judged as most likely : that the 



462 ^n)S TO FAITH. [Essay IX 

Apostle to substantiate a statement, -^'hicli could liave 
been easily substantiated by other passages, deliberately 
altered a portion of Scriptnre wliich had no reference 
to the matter before him, or that he rightly assigned 
to a seemingly historical passage from a Psalm, which 
(be it observed), in its original scope, has every appear- 
ance of being prophetic and jy^essianic, a deeper mean- 
ing than the words seem to bear (snch a meaning being 
in one case, at least, admitted to exist), and that he 
altered the form of tlie words to make more palpable 
and evident the meaning which he knew they involved ? 
We have no anxiety as to the decision in the case of 

any calm-judging and mibiassed reader One 

further remark we may make in conclusion, and it is 
a remark of some little importance, viz., that if the 
present instance be deemed an example of Scripture 
having a second and deeper, as well as a first and more 
simple meaning, it must also be regarded as an exam- 
ple of an authoritative change in the exact words of a 
quotation, — the change being designed to bring up the 
underlying meaning which was known to exist, and to 
place it with more distinctness before the mind of the 
general reader. 

III. Having thus, as it v\'Ould seem, substantiated 
our assertion that deeper meanings lie in Scripture 
than appear on the surface, and that this may be 
properly considered as in part accounting for the 
existence of some of those difSculties and diversities 
which are met with in Scripture interpretation, we now 
pass to the third assertion relative to the subject, viz., 
that Scripture is divinely inspired.. 

Here we enter upon a wide subject, which may 
with reason claim for itself a separate and independent 
essay, and which certainly ought fully to be disposed of 
before any rules bearing upon interpretation can prop- 
erly be laid down. As a longer discussion of this subject 
will be found in another portion of our volume, we 
will here only make a very few general remarks upon 
inspiration as immediatel}"^ bearing upon interpretation, 
and more especially upon the estimate formed of its 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 4^3 

nature and extent by the advocates of the system of 
Scriptural exegesis now under our consideration. 

In the outset, let it be said that we heartily concur 
with the majority of oor opponents in rejecting all 
theories of inspiration, and in sweeping aside all those 
distinctions and definitions w^hich, only in too many 
cases, have been merely called forth by emergencies, 
and draw^n up for no other purpose than to meet real 
and supposed difficulties. The remark probably is 
just, that most of the current explanations err more 
especially in attempting to define what, though real, 
is incapable of being defined in an exact manner. 
Hence all such terms as "mechanical" and "dy- 
namical" inspiration, and all the theories that have 
grown round these epithets, — all such distinctions as 
inspirations of superintendence, inspirations of sug- 
gestion, and so forth, — all attempts again to draw lines 
of demarcation between the inspiration of the books 
of Scripture themselves and the inspiration of the 
authors of which those books were results, may be 
most profitably dismissed from our thoughts, and the 
whole subject calmly reconsidered from what may be 
termed a Scriptural point of view. The holy Yolume 
itself shall explain to us the nature of that influence 
by which it is pervaded and quickened. 

8. Thus far we are perfectly in accord with our 
opponents. We are agreed on both sides that there is 
such a thing as inspiration in reference to the Scrip- 
tures, and w^e are further agreed that the Scriptures 
themselves are the best sources of information on the 
subject. Here, however, all agreement completely 
ceases. When we invite our opponents to go with us 
to the Scriptures to discuss their statements on the 
subject before us, and to compare the inferences and 
deductions that either side may make from them, we 
at once find that by an appeal to Scripture we and our 
opponents mean something utterly and entirely dif- 
ferent. We mean a consideration of what Scripture 
says about itself: we find that they mean a stock- 
taking of its errors and inaccuracies, of its antagonisms 



464 ^^S '^^ FAITH. [Essay IX. 

witli science and its oppositions to liistorj, — all wliich 
tliey tell us must first be estimated, and with all which 
they urge, that inspiration, he it whatever it may, 
must be reconcilable and harmonized. In a word, both 
sides have started from the first on widely difierent 
assumptions. We assume that what Scripture says is 
trustworthy, and so conceive that it may be fittingly 
appealed to as a witness concerning its own character- 
istics ; they assume that it abounds in errors and in- 
congruities, and suggest that the number and nature 
of these ought to be generally ascertained before any 
further step can be taken, or any opinion safely arrived 
at an the whole subject. Such seems a fair estimate of 
the position and attitude of the two contending parties. 

If this statement of our relative positions be just, 
it seems perfectly clear that several different lines of 
argument may be adopted. "We may examine the 
grounds on which their assumption rests, or endeavour 
to establish the validity of our own. We may deny 
that any errors or inaccuracies exist, and throw upon 
them the onus 'probandi^ or we may take the most 
popular and telling instances in their enumeration and 
endeavour to discover by fair investigation how far 
they deserve their position, and how far prejudice and 
exaggeration may not have been at work on their side, 
as conservatism and accommodation on ours. All 
these are courses which may be adopted with more or 
less advantage, but any one of which would occupy 
far more space than we can afford for this portion of 
our subject. We must satisfy ourselves, on the present 
occasion, with making, on the one hand, a few affirma- 
tive comments upon the nature, degree, and limits of 
the inspiration which we assign to the Scripture ; and 
on the other hand, a few negative comments upon 
counter-statements advanced by opponents, which seem 
more than usually untrustworthy. 

To begin with the negative side, let us observe, in 
the first place, that nothing can really be less tenable 
than the assertion that there is no foundation in the 
Gospels or Epistles for any of the higher or super- 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTUKE, AND ITS INTEKPEETATION. 455 

natural views of inspiration. It is a perfectly intel- 
ligible line of argument to assert that for the testimony 
of any book upon its own nature and characteristics to 
be worth anything, it must first be shown that the book 
can fully be relied on : it is quite consistent with fair 
reasoning to refuse to accept as final or conclusive the 
evidence of what it may be contended has been shown 
to be a damaged witness. Such modes of argument 
are quite fair and intelligible, and as such we have no 
fault to find with them ; but to make at the outset an 
assertion, such as we are now considering, — to prej- 
udice the minds of the inexperienced by an aflirma- 
tion, which, if believed, cannot fail to produce the 
strongest possible effect, and which all the time is the 
very reverse of w^hat is the fact, is indeed very like 
that " random scattering of uneasiness '* which has 
been attributed to our opponents^* and which such 
cases as the present go very far to substantiate. It is 
scarcely possible that those who make such assertions 
can be ignorant of the terms in which our Lord is 
represented by the Gospels to have spoken about the 
Scriptures of the Old Testament. It cannot surely be 
forgotten that He said that they " could not be 
broken " (John x. 35), and that when he so spake He 
•was using Scripture in a manner that almost vouched 
for its verbal and literal infallibility. It cannot have 
been overlooked that when He was citing the words of 
David He defined the divine influence under which 
those words were uttered (Mark xii. 36). Does not an 
Evangelist record His promise to His Apostles that 
the Holy Ghost " should teach them all things, and 
bring all things which He said to them to their re- 
membrance " (John xiv. 26) ? and does not that same 
Evangelist mention the yet more inclusive promise 
that the same Eternal Spirit should lead the Disciples 
into "the whole truth" (John xvi. 13)? and are such 
words to be explained away or to be limited ? Does 
not the same writer further tell us that the Holy 
Ghost was almost visibly given to the Apostles by the 

* See Moberly, Preface to * Sermons on the Beatitudes,' p. ii. 



466 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX 

Lord Himself (Jolm xx. 22) ? and does not another 
Evangelist tell of the completed fulness of that gift, and 
of men so visibly filled with the Holy Spirit that the 
lips of bystanders and strangers bore their ready and 
amazed testimony ? Have we no foundation for assert- 
ing a higher inspiration when eleven men are told by 
a parting Lord that they are to be his witnesses, and 
that they are to receive supernatural assistance for 
their mission ? Is testimony to be confined to words 
spoken, and to be denied to words written ? Did the 
power that glowed in the heart of the speaker die out 
when he took up the pen of the writer ? Was not, 
again, the " demonstration of the Spirit " laid claim to 
by St. Paul (1 Cor. ii. 4); was it not " God's wisdom" 
that he spake (ver. Y) ? Does he not plainly say that 
the things " w^hicli God prepared for those that love 
Him," His purposes of mercy and counsels of love, 
were revealed to him by God through the agency of 
the Spirit (ver. 10)? and does he not enhance his 
declaration not only by afiirmatively stating from 
whom his teachiug was directly imparted, but by 
stating, on the negative side, that to man's wisdom he 
owed it not? Yea, and lest it should be thought that 
such high ^prerogatives belonged only to words spoken 
by the lips, does not the same Apostle guard himself, 
as it were, by claiming for his written words an origin 
equally Divine ? and does he not make the recognition 
of this a very test of illumination and spirituality 
(1 Cor. xiv. 37) ? We pause, not from lack of further 
statements, but from the feeling that quite enough has 
been said to lead any fair reader to pronounce the 
assertion of there being '^ no foundation " in the 
Gospels or Epistles for any of the higher or super- 
natural views of inspiration contrary to evidence, and 
perhaps even to admit that such assertions, where 
ignorance cannot be pleaded in extenuation, are not to 
be deemed consistent with fair and creditable argu- 
ment. To deny the worth or validity of such testimony 
is perfectly compatible with fair controversy ; to deny 
its existence in the teeth of such evidence, — and such 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 457 

evidence is known and patent, — can only be designed 
to give a bias to a reader, and to raise np antecedent 
prejudices in reference to subjects and opinions after- 
wards to be introduced. How far such a mode of 
dealing with grave questions is just or defensible, we 
will leave others to decide. 

Let us make a second remark of a somewhat simi- 
lar character, and earnestly protest against hazy and 
indefinite modes of speaking about the testimony of 
the Church in reference to the doctrine of inspiration. 
"Whether the Church is right or wrong in its estimate 
of the nature and limits of this gift, is certainly a ques- 
tion which those who feel the necessity of inquiry are 
perfectly at liberty to entertain. We may pity a state 
of mind that is not moved by such authority, and we 
may suspect it to be ill-balanced ; but we do not com- 
plain of such a mode of proceeding. If a man wishes 
to find out whether the Early Church, for instance, is 
right or wrong in its estimate of a principle or a doc- 
trine, let him (in a serious and anxious spirit) com- 
mence his investigation, but let him not seek by vague 
and indefinite language to make it first doubtful whether 
the Early Church really did form any estimate at all, — 
when that estimate is plainly set down in black and 
white in fifty difierent treatises. Let us, at any rate, 
have a clear understanding on the question at issue, 
and agree as honest men to throw no doubts npon sim- 
ple matters of simplest fact. 'Now, when we are told 
that the term inspiration is but of yesterday, and more 
especially that the question of inspiration was not de- 
termined by Fathers of the Church, we do seem justi- 
fied in protesting against such really unfair attempts to 
gain over those who have neither the time, the knowl- 
edge, nor perhaps the will, to test the truth of the asser- 
tion. Let there be no mistake on this subject. The 
Fathers of the Church may be right or they may be 
wrong ; but, at any rate, on this topic they have spoken 
most frequently and most plainly, and if any question 
in the world may be considered determined by them 
this certainly is one. The Apostolical Fathers term the 



468 -^I^S "j^^ FAITH. [Ess AT IX. 

Scriptures "the true sayings " of the Holy Ghost (Clem. 
Rom. ad Cor, i. 45). In quoting passages from the Old 
Testament they often use the significant formula " the 
Holy Ghost saith." Those that followed them used 
their language. Justin Martyr describes the nature of 
inspiration, and even hints at its limits {Cohort. § 8) ; 
Irenseus speaks of the Scriptures as "spoken by the 
"Word of God and His Spirit" {Hcbt. ii. 28. 2); and 
even attributes to the foresight of the Eternal Spirit the 
choice of this rather than that mode of expression in 
the opening words of St. Matthew's Gospel {Hcer. iii. 
16. 2). In quoting a prophet, Clement of Alexandria 
pauses to correct himself, and say it was not so much 
the prophet as the Holy Spirit in him {Cohort. § 8, p. 
^^\ and on the question of Scripture infallibility and 
perfection he is no less precise and definite {Cohort. §9, 
p. 68 ; Strom, ii. p. 432, vii. p. 897, ed. Potter). Ter- 
tullian and Cyprian carry onward the common senti- 
ment ; those who follow them reiterate the same so fre- 
quently and so definitively that we become embar- 
rassed by the very affluence of our examples. Euse- 
bius of Csesarea deals even with technicalities, and 
brands those who dared to say that the writers of 
Scripture put one name in the j^lace of another {Com- 
ment, in Psalm, xxxiii., ed. Montf.). Augustine states 
most explicitly his views on the whole subject, and 
asserts the infallibility of Scripture in language which 
the strongest asserter of the so-called bibliolatry of the 
day could not desire to see made more definite or un- 
qualified (see for example Ejpist. Ixxxii. 3, torn. ii. p. 
285, ed. Bened. 2). . . Again we pause. We could con- 
tinue such quotations almost indefinitely. We could put 
our fingers positively on hundreds of such passages in 
the writings of the Fathers of the first five or six cen- 
turies ; we could quote the language of early Councils ; 
we could point to the silent testimony of early contro- 
versies, each side claiming Scripture to be that from 
w^hich there could be no appeal ; we could even call in 
heretics, and prove from their own defences of their 
own tenets, from their own admissions and their owd 



IX.] SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEKPKETATION, 459 

assumptions, that the inspiration of Scripture was of 
all subjects one that was conceived thoroughly settled 
and agreed upon. Enough, however, has perhaps been 
said, enough quoted, to place the matter beyond doubt, 
and to make this perfectly certain, — that what are 
called high views of inspiration were entertained al- 
most unanimously by the earlier writers of the Church. 
So obvious, indeed, is the fact that writers like Girdrer 
not only concede the fact of the agreement of the early 
writers, and admit the strong opinions they held on the 
subject, but use it as a very ground of reproach against 
them, and call upon us to wonder how men who enter- 
tained such high views on the inspiration of Scripture 
could possibly be such arbitrary and unfaithful inter- 
preters. 

A third remark may be made on the negative side 
by way of complaint that we find so little weight as- 
signed to the subjective argument, as it may be termed, 
for the inspiration of Scripture. In the sceptical writ- 
ings of the day the argument is rarely stated except to 
be dealt with as a form of a natural but not very harm- 
less illusion. Yet it is an argument of the greatest force 
and importance, and an argument which, if rightly 
handled, it is much easier to set aside than to answer. 
Is it nothing that the Bible has spoken to millions upon 
millions of hearts, as it were with the very voice of 
God Himself? Have not its words burned within till 
men have seen palpably the Divine in that which spake 
to them ? Is it not a fact that convictions on the nature 
of the Scriptures deepen with deepening study of them? 
Ask the simple man to whom the Bible has long be- 
come the daily friend and counsellor, who reads and 
applies what he reads as far as his natural powers ena- 
ble him ; ask him whether longer and more continued 
study has altered to any extent his estimate of the 
Book as a Divine revelation. What is the invariable 
answer? The Book "has found him ;" it has consoled 
him in sorrows for which there seemed no consolation 
on this side the grave ; it has wiped away tears that it 
seemed could only be wiped away in that far land 



^Yo -^^S '^^ FAITH. [Essay IX 

\Yliere sadness shall be no more ; it lias pleaded gently 
during long seasons of spiritual coldness ; it lias infused 
strength in hours of weakness ; it has calmed in mo- 
ments of excitement ; it has given to better emotions a 
permanence, and to stirred-up feelings a reality ; it has 
made itself felt to be what it is ; out of the abundance 
of his heart the mouth speaks, and he tells us with all 
the accumulated convictions of an honest mind, that if 
he once deemed the Bible to be fully inspired on the tes- 
timony of others, now he knows it on evidence that has 
been brought home to his own soul. He has now long 
had the witness in himself, and that witness he feels 
and knows is unchangeably and enduringly true. 

Ask, again, the professed student of Scripture, the 
scholar, the divine, the interpreter, one who, to what 
we may term the testimony of the soul, in the case of 
the less cultivated reader, can add the testimony of the 
mind and the spirit, — ask such a one whether increased 
familiarity with Scripture has quickened or obscured 
his perception of the Divine within it, whether it has 
led him to higher or to lower views of inspiration. 
Have not, we may perhaps anxiously ask, the difficul- 
ties of Scripture wearied him, its seeming discordances 
perplexed, its obscurities depressed him? Have not 
the tenor of its arguments, and the seeming want of 
coherence and connexion in adjacent sentences, some- 
times awakened uneasy and disquieting thoughts? 
What is almost invariably the answer ? — " 'No ; far 
otherwise." Deepened study has brought its blessing 
and its balm. It has shown how what might seem the 
greatest difficulties often turn merely upon our ignor- 
ance of one or two unrecorded facts or relations ; it has 
conducted to standing-jDoints where in a m^oment all 
that has hitherto seemed confused and distorted has 
arranged itself in truest symmetry and in the fairest 
perspective. In many an obscure passage our student 
will tell us how the light has ofttimes suddenly broken, 
how he has been cheered by being permitted to recog- 
nize and identify the commingling of human weakness 
and Divine power, the mighty revelation almost too 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPEETATIOK 4^^i 

great for mortal utterance, tlie " earthen vessel " almost 
parting asunder from the greatness and abundance of 
the heavenly treasure committed to it. He will tell 
us, again, how in many a portion where the logical 
connexion has seemed suspended or doubtful, — in one 
of those discourses, for instance, of his Lord as re- 
corded by St. John, — the true connexion has at length 
slowly and mysteriously disclosed itself, how he has 
perceived and realized all. For a while he has felt 
himself thinking as his Saviour vouchsafed to think, in 
part beholding truth as those Divine eyes beheld it ; 
for a brief space his mind has seemed to be consciously 
one with the mind of Christ. All this he has per- 
ceived and felt. And he will tell us, perchance, what 
has often been the sequel ; how he has risen from his 
desk and fallen on his knees, and with uplifted voice 
blessed and adored Almighty God for His gift of the 
Book of Life. 

Tlie cold-hearted may smile at such things, the so- 
called philosophical may affect to account for them ; 
they may be put aside as illusions, or they may be ex- 
plained away as projections of self on the passive page, 
unconscious infusion of one's own feelings and emotions 
in the calm words that meet the outward eye. All 
this has been urged against such testimony, and will 
ever be urged even to the very end. But when the 
end does come the truth will appear. That witnessing 
of soul and spirit will, it may be, rise up in silent judg- 
ment against many a one who now slights it; that testi- 
mony so often rejected as self-engendered and fanciful, 
will be seen to have been real and heaven-born, a reflex 
image of an eternal truth, a part and a portion of the 
surest of the sure things of God. 

9, But let us now pass from the negative to the 
positive, and make a few affirmative observations on 
the subject before us. Let us begin, not with a theory, 
but with a definition and a statement of the belief that 
is in us. If asked to define what we mean by the in- 
spiration of Scripture, let us be bold, and make answer 
— that fully convinced as we are that the Scripture is 



472 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX 

the revelation tlirongli human media of the infinite 
mind of Qod to the finite mind of man, and recognizing 
as we do both a human and a Divine element in the 
written Word, we verily believe that the Holy Ghost 
was so breathed into the mind of the writer, so illu- 
mined his spirit and pervaded his thoughts, that, while 
nothing that individualized him as man was taken 
away, everything that was necessary to enable him to 
declare Divine Truth in all its fulness was bestowed 
and superadded. And, as consonant with this, we 
further believe that this influence of the Spirit, wheth- 
er by illumination, suggestion, superintendence, or all 
combined, extended itself— ;;??^5-^, to the enunciation 
of sentiments and doctrines, that so the will and coun- 
sels of God should not be a matter of doubt, but of 
certain knowledge ; secondly^ to statements, recitals, 
facts, that so the truth into which the writer was led 
should be known and recognized; thirdly^ to the choice 
of expressions, modes of speech, and perhaps occasion- 
ally even of words (the individuality of the writer being 
conserved), that so the subject-matter of the revelation 
might be conveyed in the fittest and most appropriate 
language, and in the garb best calculated to set off its 
dignity and commend its truth. 

Let such be our definition. If asked how we justi- 
fy it, how we prove our assertions, we answer in two 
ways : first, by d jpriori arguments of great force and 
validity; secondly, by a jposteriori arguments of equal 
or even greater strength — arguments which our pre- 
ceding remarks on the negative side have been de- 
signed indirectly to set forward and substantiate. Into 
these arguments we do not intend to enter, but we may 
profitably pause to specify them. On the a jpriori side, 
and especially in reference to the Old Testament, we 
may specify evidences of inspiration derived from the 
clear accordance of various events with prophecies 
special or general that can be proved to have been 
uttered before the events in question. Among in- 
stances of this nature the history and present state of 
the Jews have been always rightly and confidently 



E88AT IX.] SCEIPTUKE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 473 

appealed to.* Again, on the same side, but more in 
reference to the ISTew Testament, it has been fairly 
urged that, if we admit the general truth and Divine 
character of the Christian dispensation, we can hardly 
believe that those who were chosen to declare its prin- 
ciples and to make known its doctrines were not es- 
pecially guarded from error in the execution of their 
weighty commission, and were not divinely guided 
both in the words they uttered and the statements they 
committed to writing. On the a joosteriori side we 
may specify the three great arguments to w^hich we 
have already alluded : the direct declarations of Scrip- 
ture, the trustworthy character of Scripture having 
been first demonstrated ;f the unanimous consent of 
the early writers, and unchanging testimony of the 
Catholic Church; and, lastly, the inward and subjec- 
tive testimony to the Divine nature of the Scripture 
yielded by the soul and spirit of the individual. Other 
arguments there are, especially on the a priori side, of 
varying degrees of strength and solidity, appealing in 
different ways to different minds ; but the chief per- 
haps have been specified, and on these we may safely 
and securely base our preceding assertions, and our 
unhesitating and unqualified belief in the full inspira- 
tion of the Word of God. 

But it may be asked, how do we conceive that this 
inspiration took place? "What is our theory of the 
process ? what do we conceive to be the modus agendi 
of the Holy Spirit in the heart of man? This we 
plainly refuse to answer. We know not, and do not 
presume to inquire into the manner ; we recognize and 
believe in the fact. Individual writers may have spec- 
ulated ; imagery, suitable or unsuitable, may have been 
introduced as illustrative by a few thinkers in early 
ages ; but the Catholic Church has never put forward 
a theory. On this subject she has always maintained 

* See Moberly, Preface to ' Sermons on the Beatitudes,' p. xxxii. 

t Thus to appeal to Scripture to define its own character in reference to 
inspiration seems perfectly fair, when the trustworthy character of the 
volume has been properly denonstrated ; compare the remarks of Chalmers, 
'Christian Evidences,' iv. 2. 26, vol. iv., p. 390. (Glasgow ed.) 



474 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

a solemn reserve ; she declares to us that in the Scrip- 
ture the Holy Ghost speaks to us by the mouths of 
men ; she permits us to recognize a Divine and a 
human element ; but, in reference to the nature, ex- 
tent, and special circumstances of the union, she warns 
us not to seek to be wise above what has been written, 
not to endanger our faith with speculations and conjec- 
tures about that which has not been revealed. Theo- 
ries of inspiration are what* scepticism is ever craving 
for ; it is the voice of hapless unbelief that is ever 
loudest in its call for explanation of the manner of the 
assumed union of the Divine with the human, or of 
the proportions in which each element is to be admitted 
and recognized. , Such explanations have not been 
vouchsafed, and it is as vain and unbecoming to de- 
mand them as it is to require a theory of the union of 
the Divinity and Humanity in the person of Christ, or 
an estimate of the proportions in which the two perfect 
natures are to be conceived to co-exist. 

Not much more profitable is the inquiry into the 
exact limits of inspiration, whether it is to be consid- 
ered in all cases as extending^ to words, or whether it 
is only to be confined to sentiments and doctrines. At 
first sight we might be inclined to adopt the latter 
statement, and such, to some extent, would certainly 
seem to have been the view of a writer of no less anti- 
quity and learning than Justin Martyr ; still when we 
remember, on the one hand, that there are instances in 
Scripture in which weighty arguments have in some 
degree been seen to depend on the very words and ex- 
pressions that are made use of (John x. 34 : Gal. iii. 
16), and on the other, that many important truths must 
have lost much of their force and significance if they 
had not been expressed exactly with that verbal preci- 
sion which the subject-matter might have demanded, 
we shall be wise either to forbear coming to any deci- 
sion, or else to adopt that guarded view which we have 
already indirectly advocated, viz., that in all passages 
of importance, wheresoever the natural powers of the 
writer would not have supplied the befitting word or 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 4*^5 

expression, there it was supplied by the real though 
probably unperceived influence of the Spirit of God. 

A question of far greater moment, and far more 
practical importance, is that whicli relates to the exact 
degree of the inspiration, the fallibility or infallibility 
of the Sacred Records. Was the inspiration such as 
wholly to preclude errors and inaccuracies, or was it 
such as can be compatible w^ith either one or the other ? 
This is clearly the real anxious question of our own times, 
and one to which we must briefly return an answer, 
as general canons of interpretation must obviously to 
some extent be modified by the opinions we form on 
a subject which so seriously affects the character of the 
documents before us. Let us pause for a moment to 
consider the answer that is now commonly returned by 
those among us who claim to be considered of ad- 
vanced thought and intelligence. They tell us, in 
language of unrestrained confidence, that no man of 
candour can fail to acknowledge the existence not only 
of mistakes as to matters of minor importance, but of 
such positive "patches of human passion and error," 
Buch " weakness of memory," or such " mingling of it 
with imagination," such "feebleness of inference, such 
confusion of illustration with argument," and such 
variations in judgment and opinion, that in the study 
of Scripture we must continually have recourse to a 
" rectifying or verifying faculty," that we may proper- 
ly be enabled to separate the Divine from the human, 
— what is true, real, and unprejudiced, from what is 
perverted, mistaken, and false. In a word, the Sacred 
writers now stand charged with errors of two kinds, — ■ 
errors of mind and judgment, and errors in matters of 
fact, but on evidence (as the following remarks will 
tend to show) which cannot be regarded either as suffi- 
cient or conclusive. 

To substantiate the first class of errors we may com- 
monly observe two modes of proceeding : on the one 
hand, the more reckless metliod of citing difficult texts, 
assuming that they contain a meaning arbitrarily fixed 
on by the critic, and probably not intended by the writer, 



476 ^^^ TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

and tlien censuring him for not having intelligibly ex- 
pressed it ; on the other hand, the more guarded but 
equally mischievous suggestion that the logic of the 
Scriptures is rhetorical in character, and that such pas- 
sages as Rom. i. 16 seq., Rom. iii. 19, al., are examples 
of some forms of error in reasoning, and such opposi- 
tions as "light and darkness," "good and evil," "the 
Spirit and the flesh," " the sheep and the goats," oppo- 
sitions of ideas only, which are not realized in fact and 
experience. "With regard to these methods, we will say 
briefly that the first is unfair and discreditable; the 
second, simple assertion that can either be disproved 
in detail, or that fairly admits of counter-assertion of 
greater probable truth. 

The second class of alleged errors is, at first sight, 
of more importance and plausibility. It professes to 
include oppositions to science, oppositions to received 
history, and cases of direct mutual contradiction. Of 
these three forms we may again briefly say that in- 
stances of the first kind, far from increasing, are steadily 
decreasing under a just comparison of the true meaning 
of the words of Scripture with the accredited conclu- 
sions of science. Recent discussions of the subjects of 
controversy by men of acknowledged scientific attain- 
ments have tended to show that the oppositions of Scrip- 
ture and science are really far more doubtful than they 
are assumed to be, and that though they still hold a very 
prominent place on the pages of the charlatan, they one 
by one disappear from the treatises of men of real science 
who have scholarship sufficient to extract the real mean- 
ing of the language of Scripture in the passages under 
consideration. . . . Much the same sort of remark, mu- 
tatis miitandisy may be made on alleged oppositions to 
received History or Chronology ; many of the supposed 
oppositions held in former times to be inexplicable have 
now entirely passed away from the scene, and have 
alike ceased to stimulate the sceptic or to disquiet the 
believer ; others, like the case of Cy renins (Luke ii. 2), 
are all but gone ; and as to what remain there is a grow- 
ing feeling among unbiassed scholars and historians that 



Essay IX.] 8CEIPTUKE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 4^7 

if we could but obtain the knowledge of a few more 
facts relative to the various points at issue, the opposi- 
tions of Scripture and History would wholly cease to 
exist. ... In regard of mutual contradictions, it might 
be thought a better case has been made out. Writers 
from whom we might have looked for more guarded 
comment have done much to exaggerate the so-called 
discrepancies of the Scripture narrative, and have some- 
what too emphatically denounced modes of explanation 
that, both from their simplicity and, not unfrequently, 
their antiquity, have very great claims on our consid- 
eration. Sceptics have not been slow to take advantage 
of this ill-advised course. When, however, all these so- 
called contradictions are mustered up, they are but a 
motley and an enfeebled host. We survey them, and 
we observe some as old as the da3^s of Celsus, and as 
decrepit as they are old ; others vainly hiding all but 
mortal wounds received in conflicts of the past, and now 
only craving a coup de grace from some combatant of 
our own times ; some of a later date, and a more aspiring 
air, recruited from Deistical controversies of a century 
or two back, but all marked with uncomely scars, and 
armed with nothing better than broken or corroded 
weapons. There they stand ; the discrepancy between 
two Evangelists about the original dwelling-place of 
Mary and Joseph, explained and well explained four- 
teen hundred years ago ; the two genealogies, fairly dis- 
cussed in ancient times, and in our own explained in a 
manner that approaches to positive demonstration ; the 
blasphemy of the tiuo thieves, disposed of very reason- 
ably by Chrysostom, and since his time on the same or 
a similar principle by ^YQry unprejudiced commentator ; 
the narrative of the woman who anointed our Lord's 
feet, first prepared for the occasion by the assumption 
that the narratives in all the four Gospels relate to the 
same woman, — an assumption regarded even by Meyer, 
and apparently De Wette, as plainly contrary to the 
fact. And so on. When we survey such a company, 
and are told that, at any rate, we should respect their 
numbers, their aggregate authority, their cumulative 



478 ^IDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

weiglit, an nneasy feeling arises in the mind that those 
who parade them must really be aware that there is 
something amiss with each case, that, however numer- 
ically strong they m,ay be, it is disagreeably true that 
as individual instances they are disabled or weak. K 
so, is there not a great responsibility resting on those 
who bring forward catalogues of such instances, and yet 
do not apprise the simple and the inexperienced that 
each supposed difficulty has most certainly been met 
over and over again, and with very reasonable success; 
that this array, so to be respected for its numbers, is 
really strong in nothing else, — a mere rabble of half- 
armed or disarmed men ? 

But finally, it may be said, are we prepared to assert 
that no inaccuracy, even in what all might agree in re- 
garding as a wholly unimportant matter of fact, — a date, 
for instance, or a name, or a popular statement of an 
indifferent matter, — either has been, or can ever be, 
found in the whole compass of Scripture ? To that 
question, in its categorical form, we should perhaps be 
wise in refusing positively to return any answer. We 
have no theory of inspiration, we only state v/hat we 
find to be a matter of fact, we only put forward what 
those facts and the testimony of the Church alike war- 
rant us in denning as the true and Catholic doctrine. 
We have no means of settling definitely whether iij)osse 
jpeccare in minor matters may, or may not, be compat- 
ible with a Divine revelation communicated through 
human media ; but certainly till inaccuracies, fairly and 
incontestably proved to be so, are brought home to the 
Scripture, we seem logically justified in believing that 
as it is with nine-tenths of the alleged contradictions in 
Scripture, so is it with the alleged inaccuracy. Either 
the so-called inaccuracy is due to our ignorance of some 
simple fact, which, if known, would explain all; or it 
is really only an illustration of one of those ver;/ condi- 
tions and characteristics of human testimony, however 
honest and truthful, without which it would cease to be 
human testimony at all. If positively forced to state 
our opinion, we will express what we believe to be the 



Essay IX.] 8CEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPEETATION. 479 

true doctrine of inspiration in this particular by an ex- 
ample and a simile. As in the case of the Incarnate 
"Word we fully recognize in the Lord's humanity all 
essentially human limitations and weaknesses, the hun- 
ger, the thirst, and the weariness on the side of the 
body, and the gradual development on the side of the 
human mind (Luke ii. 40), — in a word, all that belongs 
to the essential and original characteristics of the pure 
form of the nature He vouchsafed to assume, but plainly 
deny the existence therein of the faintest trace of sin, or 
of moral or mental imperfection, — even so in the case 
of the written Word, viewed on its purely human side, 
and in its reference to inatters previously admitted to 
have no hearing on Divine truths we may admit therein 
the existence of such incompleteness, such limitations, 
and such imperfections as belong even to the highest 
forms of purely truthful human testimony, but consist- 
ently deny the existence of mistaken views, perversion, 
misrepresentation, and any form whatever of consciously 
committed error or inaccuracy. 

10. We have thus at length touched upon all the 
main points in which the doctrine of the inspiration of 
Scripture is in any degree likely to come in contact 
with rules and principles of interpretation. Less than 
this could not have been said. Less it was not logically 
consistent to say. It may, indeed, seem plausible to 
urge that we have no right to express any prior opinion 
on such subject ; that we have only to apply to Scrip- 
ture the ordinary rules of interpretation whi'ch we ob- 
serve in the case of other books, and that w^e ought to 
leave the question of inspiration to be settled by the re- 
sults we arrive at. • Is it not, however, abundantly clear 
that if there be even a low presumption, arising from 
external or internal evidence, for supposing that the 
Scripture has characteristics which render it very un- 
like any other book, then it is only right and reasonable 
to examine that evidence before we apply rules of inter- 
pretation which, perhaps, may be found in the sequel 
to be inadmissible or inapplicable ? Surely, on the 
very face of the matter it seems somewhat strange to 



480 -^^S '^^ FAITH. [Essay IX 

be told to interpret the Scripture like any otlier book, 
while in the same breath it is avowed that there are 
many respects in which Scripture is unlike any other 
book. It is really very much the same as being told to 
ascertain with a two-foot rule the precise linear dimen- 
sions of a room of which it is known or admitted that 
the sides are not always straight, but variously curved 
and embayed. The application of our two-foot rule 
would doubtless put very clearly before us, if we had 
ever doubted it, not only the fact that bays and curva- 
tures really did exist, but also that the instrument in 
our hands was a singularly unfit one for measuring 
what it was plain required something less rigid and im- 
practicable. The duty of the two-foot rule would really 
then be over, unless we chose to reserve it for those parts 
where the walls somewhat more nearly conformed to the 
straight line. If, however, we desired properly to com- 
plete our task, we should have to go home for our meas- 
uring-tape. The nature and application, first of the 
two-foot rule and then of the measuring-tape, may now 
very fitly engage our attention, and occupy the remain- 
ing portion of the present essay. 

§3. 

11. Hitherto we have been engaged in two very 
important departments of the subject before us. In the 
first part of our paper we have done our best to clear 
away some of the errors and misrepresentations con- 
nected with the great alleged variety of Scripture inter- 
pretations. In the second portion we have endeavoured 
to arrive at a just estimate of the nature and character- 
istics of Scripture, which must be recognized by the 
careful and reverent interpreter. We have seen that 
variety is to be expected, and difficulties to be prepared 
for in the interpretation of Scripture, and we have fur- 
ther seen that this variety and these difficulties are to 
be ascribed, first, to the real difference between Scrip- 
ture and every other book ; secondly, to the existence 
in it of deeper meanings, as shown in its prophetic, 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUKE, AND ITS INTERPKETATION. 481 

typical, or even historical ]3ortions ; and thirdly, to the 
fact of its being a volume written under the influence 
of an inspiration which we have endeavoured briefly to 
explain and substantiate. These two portions of our 
subject being ffnished, -we now proceed to the third 
portion, — a discussion of what appears generally to be 
the true and nght method of interpreting a volume 
characterized as we have found the Scripture to be; 
and a statement of a few principles, rules, and observa- 
tions, which may be of some service to younger stu- 
dents, and which experience has certainly shown to be 
sound and trustworthy. 

This forms the main department of our subject, and. 
admits of several subdivisions. Perhaps our simplest 
course will be to devote the present section to a discus- 
sion of general rules of interpretation — the really im- 
portant portion of the subject; and to append in con- 
cluding sections a few comments, on the one hand, upon 
the application of Scripture, and, on the other, upon 
the grammar and laws of the letter. In so doing we 
confine ourselves principally to the Kew Testament, 
but we shall perhaps be found not unfrequently to allude 
to canons and principles that will apply to all parts of 
the Sacred Volume, and ma;/ benefit the student of the 
Old as well as of the IS^ew Testament. Ere, however, 
we enter into these discussions, let one point be clearly 
understood, — that there is a requisite, a necessary prep- 
aration for the study of the Scripture, which we assume 
throughout, a preparation of more value than a knowl- 
edge of all the rules and canons of the wisest interpret- 
ers of the world : that requisite and preparation is 
preliminary prayer. It is not necessary to enlarge upon 
a subject which speaks for itself; it is not necessary to 
commend what the very instincts of the soul tell us is 
a preparation simply and plainly indispensable. "We 
allude to it as by its very mention serving to hallov/ 
our coming remarks, and as useful in reminding us, in 
the pride and glory of our intellectual efforts, that it is 
more than probable that the very simplest reader that 
takes his translated Bible on his knees, and reads with 
21 



482 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX 

prayer that he may understand, will attain a truer and 
more inward knowledge of the words than will ever be 
vouchsafed to him who, with all the appliances of phi- 
lology and criticism, reads the original but forgets to 
mark its holy character, and .to pray that he may not 
only read, but may also learn and understand. Would 
to God that this rule were of more universal adoption, 
and had been of late more regularly observed ; for then 
we may be Avell assured that none of the scorniulness 
and rash modes of interpretation against which we have 
now to protest would ever have been put forth, and 
have tried, as they now are trying, both the faith and 
the patience of humbler students of the Word. 

One further preliminary and requisite in the case 
of the interpreter of Scripture we must here allude to, 
both on account of its own intrinsic importance, and 
still more in consequence of the startling way in which 
it has been recently neglected. That requisite is can- 
dour. ]^ext, in the work of interpretation, to a i:)rayer- 
ful and humble stands a candid and honest spirit, — a 
brave and faithful spirit that, knowing and believing 
that God is a God of Truth, hesitates not to state with 
all clearness and simplicity the results to which humble- 
minded investigation seems in each case to lead, — that 
scorns to palter and explain away, to gloss or to ideal- 
ize, — that shrinks not from frankly specifj^ing all the 
details of the apparent discrepancy, be it with other 
portions of Scripture, with science, or with history, be- 
lieving thus that the true reconciliation will hereafter 
be more readily discovered, — in a word, that has faith 
clearly to tell the dream, and patience to wait for the 
interpretation thereof. We cannot but observe that 
even sounder interpreters botli of our own and other 
times have often sadly failed in this particular. We 
own with sorrow that there have ever been over-eager 
Uzzahs among us that have sought to upbear the en- 
dangered truth with aids that have brought on them- 
selves their own chastisement. We admit, alas ! that 
good and earnest men have sometimes been driven by 
anxieties and antagonisms into patently inadmissible 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 433 

solutions ; we know that they have urged untenable 
accommodations, and we are even willing to believe, as 
our opponents tell ns, that they have dwelt on evidence 
that was in their favour, and have been very insuffi- 
ciently sensitive to tliat which was against them. This 
we know and admit, but at the same time w^e fail not 
to observe that, as our coming examples will show, they 
who have brought this charge against others lie griev- 
ously open to it themselves, and that it is indeed time 
that both parties should desist from courses which do 
such deep dishonour to the Word of God, and iniply 
such an utter want both of faith and integrity. 

Let the interpreter then resolve, with God's assist- 
ing grace, to be candid and truthful. Let him fear not 
to state honestly the results of his own honest investi- 
gations ; let him be simple, reverent, and plain-spoken, 
and, above all, let him pray against that sectarian bias 
which, by importing its own foregone conclusions into 
the word of Scripture, and by refusing to see or to ac- 
knowdedge what makes against its own prejudices, has 
proved the greatest known hindrance to all fair inter- 
pretation, and has tended, more than anything else in 
the world, to check the free course of Divine Truth. 
To illustrate our meaning by examples. Let the inter- 
preter in the first place be seduced by no timidity or 
prejudices from ascertaining the true text. Let him 
not fall back upon the too often repeated statement 
that, as readings affect no great points of doctrine, the 
subject may be left in abeyance. It is indeed most 
true, that different readings of such a character as 
1 Tim. iii. 16, or interpolations such as 1 John v. T, 
are few and exceptional. It is indeed a cause for de- 
vout thankfulness, if not even for a recognition of a 
special providence, that out of the vast number of 
various readings so few affect vital questions ; still it is 
indisputably a fact that but few pages of the JSTew Tes- 
tament can be turned over without our finding points 
of the greatest interest affected by very trivial varia- 
tions of reading. On the presence or absence of an 
article in John v. 1 the whole chronology of our Lord's 



484 ^II^S TO FAITH. fEssAYlX. 

ministerial life maj be said almost entirely to depend. 
A very slight alteration in Mark vii. 31 opens out a fact 
of deep historical interest, and is of very great signifi- 
cance in reference alike to commands subsequently 
given to the Apostles to preach the Gospel, and to 
former prohibitions (Matt, x, 5). The absence of two 
words in Eph. i. 1 (now rendered somewhat more prob- 
able by the testimony of the Codex Sinaiticus) gives a 
fresh aspect to an important Epistle, disposes at once 
of several ^nma yb^c^6 difiiculties, and further must be 
taken greatly into account in the adjustment of some 
subordinate but interesting questions with which the 
Epistle has been thought to stand in connexion (Col. 
iv. 16). The presence or absence of a few w^ords in 
Matt, xxviii. 9 affects considerably our ability to re- 
move one of the many seeming discrepancies in the 
narratives of the first hours of the morn of the Resur- 
rection. We could multiply such examples, but per- 
haps enough has been said. There are indeed several 
grounds for thinking that there is an improved feeling 
on the whole subject; and there seem some reasons for 
hoping that though no authoritative revision is likely 
to take place, nor, at present perhaps, even to be de- 
sired, 3^et that the time is coming when there will be 
a considerable agreement on many of the results of 
modern criticism, and w^hen it will be as startling to 
hear a sermon deliberately preached on Acts viii. 37, 
as it would be now on the Heavenlj^ Witnesses. There 
are, alas ! still many signs of uneasiness and obstruc- 
tion; but we do entreat and conjure those who would 
only too gladly put the whole question in abeyance to 
pause, seriously to pause, before they do such dishonour 
to the w^ords of inspiration, and leave clinging to our 
Church both the reproaches which are now so pitilessly 
cast upon iis all by the gainsayer, and that still deeper 
reproach of our own hearts, — that, believing the Bible 
to be a special, direct, and inspired revelation from 
God, we have yet not used the means now at hand of 
ascertaining the exact language in Avhich that revelar 
tion is vouchsafed. Mournful indeed will be the retro- 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTURE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 485 

spect, and gloomy indeed the future, if unbecoming 
anxiety or a timid conservatism is to tempt honest 
hearts to show sadly lacking measures of faith, and to 
deal deceitfully with the Oi'acles of God. 

If tliis be the first form in which candour is to be 
shown, let the second be the fearless statement of the 
apparent results of investigation, whether on this side 
or on that, in the case of collective or individual pas- 
sages. A few remarks will illustrate our meaning, and 
will incidentally substantiate what we have stated 
above, viz., that those who have recently most inveighed 
against want of candour in others are grievously lack- 
ing in it themselves."^ What, for instance, can be more 
uncandid than to imply that justification by faith may 
mean " peace of mind or sense of Divine approval," 
when against it we have not only the current of "two 
important Epistles, but observe that in the very passage 
from wdiich such a perverted view might have been 
derived (Rom. v. 1) the mention of the Saviour as the 
medium shows in what sense the Apostle meant his 
words to be understood, and how consistently he could 
state eight verses afterwards that we were justified in 
and by the blood of Christ (eV rS aifiarc), and were rec- 
onciled by His death (ver. 10)? How really unpar- 
donable to hint that resurrection may mean " a spiritual 
quickening," and to stamp the exact meaning of the 
hint by the subsequent assertion, that Heaven is not a 
place so much as fulfilment of the love of God, when 
this is a perversion of the word against which an Apos- 
tle has left a special and determinate protest ! How 
opposed to all principles of honest explanation to imply 
that propitiation is the recovery of a peace with God 
which sin has interrupted, and to follow it up by tiie 
supplementary assertion that negation of " rite of blood" 
belongs essentially to a spiritual God, Avhen we have 
the drift of part of a long Epistle opposed to such a 
view, and when we further observe that a mention of 
the material element " blood " in connexion with our 

* For the culpable statements and insinuatious reprehended in the text, 
see * Essays and Reviews,' p. 80 seq. 



486 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

redemption and our Lord's atonement (Eph. i. Y, ii. 13; 
1 Pet. i. 2, 19, al.) is in the Is'ew Testament so per- 
petual and pervasive that he who denies it mnst be 
prepared to deny the evidence of his own senses ! Such 
melancholv perversions of Scripture may perhaps be 
extreme cases, but they may suitably serve as exam- 
ples of the lengths to which prejudice and want of 
candour may at last proceed, and may incidentally 
warn us that the dread term "judicial blindness " ex- 
presses no mere fancy of theologians, but a frightful 
and a substantive truth. 

With such painful examples before us, surely the 
duty of resolving at all costs to be candid, to estimate 
fairly the details, and state honestly the results of in- 
vestigations, be the apparent tenor of those results 
whatever it may, seems to press itself upon us with 
redoubled force. I^ever was there a time when can- 
dour on all sides seemed more necessary, never a period 
in the history of our Church when a frank recognition 
of points of difficulty and diiference seemeddikely to be 
productive of more real good. Above all things, let 
us not yield to the temj)tation of holding back what we 
believe to be the true aspect of a passage because it 
may be thought to lend a passing countenance to the 
tenets of opponents. Let us be fair to all sides. While 
then, for example, we justly protest against the use of 
1 Cor. iii. 13 to establish Purgatory, because, on the 
one hand, perspicuity, and, on the other, details (eV 
TTvpl), as illustrated by parallel passages (2 Thess. i. 8 ; 
Dan. vii. 9, 10 ; Mai. iv. 1), alike seem to point to 
rj rjfiipa (previously agreed upon by both sides to 
be " dies Domini," Yulg.) being the nominative to 
aTroKaXvTrTerac ; so, in the case of 2 Tim. i. 16 (comp. 
ch. iv. 19) we do not shrink from giving the opinion 
that the terms of the verse seem to imply that Onesi- 
phorus was dead at the time that the Ej^istle was writ- 
ten, though we may know the use that will be made of 
the statement. While, again, we deny the fairness of 
using Gal. v. 6 to support the theory of ajidesformata, 
we are not deterred by the known use of the text in 



Essay IX.] 8CKIPTURE, AND ITS mTEEPEETATION. 437 

support of Tradition from stating the opinion that, in 
the case of 2 Thess. ii. 15, the nse of iScBdxOrjre and the 
general tenor of the context justify the reference of 
Trapahoaei^ to matters, not only of discipline, but cdso 
of doctrine. ... To pass to other opponents : we fear 
not, on the one side, to give uj) several of the examples 
said to fall nnder Granville Sharp's rule, as, for exam- 
ple, Eph. v. 5, 2 Thess. i. 12, deeming the application 
of the rule in words like 0eo9 and Kvpco<; to be, grani- 
matically considered, precarious ; on the other side, we 
feel the contextual allusions to be so distinct in Tit. ii. 
13, that we have no hesitation in stating our firm belief 
that the title " Great God " is there applied to the Lord 
Jesus. Again, we are not afraid to own that virip, 
though apparently so used in Pliilem. 13, is not safely 
to be pressed in every doctrinal passage similar to Gal. 
iii. 13, or 1 Pet. iii. 18, as serving to establish the doc- 
trine of our Lord's vicarious sufferings : we claim how 
ever, in return, the same candour at the hands of our 
opponents in the interpretation of such passages as 1 
Tim. ii. 6 {avTiXvTpov), 1 Pet. ii. 24, which, if words 
mean anything, do assuredly imply that doctrine in 
the most plain and nnqualified way. We deny not all 
the fcdi' inferences that flow from such passages as — 
" every soul shall bear its own iniquity," — but we do 
justly complain, with such words before ns as ri/cva 
opjT]^ (Eph. ii. 2 ; actually rendered by one living writ- 
er "children ofmipidse^^% and with a variety of simi- 
lar allusions positively pervading the I^Tew Testament, 
that we should be told that the Christian scheme of 
redemption " has been staked " on two so-called figura- 
tive expressions of St. Paul, as found in Kom. v. 12 
and 1 Cor. xv. 22. We draw back with positive repug- 
nance from such a gloss as that of Beza (" quosvis 
homines") on the holy inclusiveness of the irdvra^ in 1 
Tim. ii. 5, yet again we do not shrink from a single 
inference that legitimately comes from the e^eXefaro 
in such passages as Eph. i. 4, nor do we deny that^few 
topics have been more overlooked, and few which throw 

* See Maurice, ' Unity of the New Testament,' p. 538. 



488 -^I^^ TO FAITH. [Ebsat IX 

a greater light on the final adjustment of all things, 
than the circumstances, characteristics, and prerogatives 
of the elect. Few perversions, again, have been more 
decided than the change of nominative in Heb. x. 38, 
yet this ought all the more to urge ns, on the other 
side, to set an example of candour in the interpretation 
of the eVtTeXecret in Phil. i. 6, and not to tamper with 
the tense of /Be^aiiMaet, or the meaning of eo)? rekov^ in 
1 Cor. i. 8. So again, though we may use Calvin's 
own words, and regard it in truth as a horrihile decretum 
that would involve in a predetermined perdition the 
darkened nations of a pagan world, we yet refuse to 
interpret against the usus scr{be7idi of an inspired 
author, and in a passage like Rom. i. 24 we dare not 
regard a grammatical formula wliich appears in almost 
all cases to mark ^urjpose^ as in this case only indica- 
tive of issue and result. Lastly, to gather up a hand- 
ful of passages with which party bias has dealt deceit- 
fully, — if we regard it as unprincipled that such a word 
as LXacTTTJptov should be explained away in Rom. iii. 
25, perverse that such a plain and positive concrete 
term as Xovrpov should be volatilised in Eph. v. 26, Tit. 
iii. 6, or such a passage as John iii. 5 toned down, 
monstrous that such a clear prohibition as that in Col. 
ii. 18 should be evaded by an unauthorized limitation 
of one word {6p7](TK€ia)^ or a non-natural explanation of 
another {dyyeXcov), — if, again, we recoil from the ex- 
pressed or implied denials of the typical relations of 
circumcision and baptism, when we can put our fingers 
on such verses as Col. ii. 11, and the explanatory verse 
which follows it, — if we start to find the use of a strong 
word (o/j/c/fo)), where we should not have expected it 
(1 Thess. V. 27), suggest the assumption that an Apostle 
at times was not master of, or did not know the value 
of, the words which he was using, — if, with reason, we 
shrink from and even denounce all such instances of 
prejudice and Avant of candour in our opponents; yet 
let us also remember that on the side of over-anxious 
orthodoxy every instance could find its exact parallel, 
and that we may be well reminded ourselves to take 



Essay IX.) SCKIPTURE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 439 

good heed that we be not ensnared by perverted princi- 
ples of interpretation that have thus long retained such 
a baneful ascendency. On reviewing such a list, does 
not the conviction arise that the " speaking the truth 
in love " of the Apostle is a principle that needs anew 
to be commended to every interpreter of Scripture ? 
and does not also the melancholy reflection rise with it 
that it is, perhaps, almost exclusively owing to the 
long neglect of this principle that we must ascribe the 
present state of parties, and their present attitudes of 
increasing hostility and antagonism? 

12. But to pass from these preliminary comments 
to the main question with, which we are now more es- 
pecially concerned, let us proceed to consider what, 
judging from the experiences of the past and the pres- 
ent, seems to be the most befitting and trustworthy 
method of interpreting a Volume bearing such sti-iking 
and unique characteristics as we find in the Holy Scrip- 
tures. * The answer, it can hardly be doubted, after 
W'hat has been said in the earlier portion of this essay, 
must be — " the literal and historical method,'' that 
method which not only concerns itself with the simple 
and grammatical meaning of the words, but also with 
that meaning viewed under what may be termed, for 
want of a better word, its historical relations, viz., as 
illustrated by facts, modified by the context, substan- 
tiated by the tenor of the Holy Eook, and receiving 
elucidation from minor specialities and details. On 
the general propriety of such a method there will not 
be, perhaps, any very great dififerences of opinion. On 
the particular rules for carrying out the method we 
must naturally expect considerable debate and disagree- 
ment. For example, the seemingly comprehensive 
and plausible rule which has been lately so much 
pressed upon our attention — " Interpret Scripture like 
any other book " — has already been seen to be at best 
only of limited application, and to involve assumptions 
— e. g. the resemblance of Scripture to other books in 
respect of its having one and only one meaning — which 
we have apparently had the fullest reasons for refusing 
21* 



490 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

to coTice.de. Many just objections may also be urged 
against other rules that have been proposed, especially 
against those which, tacitly assuming an exaggerated 
amount of figurative language in the Scriptures, tend 
to exempt many portions of the inspired Yolume from 
being regarded to mean what they actually say, and 
many declarations from having assigned to them their 
real force and significance. It is scarcely too much 
to say, that most of these modern rules have involved 
some sinister tendency, and have been based on very 
thinly covered assumptions of an amount of error in 
the Scriptures that is totally undemonstrable. In this 
real difiiculty of accepting what has hitherto been ad- 
vanced, we will ourselves venture to propose for con- 
sideration a few^ short canons of a very simple nature, 
which, perhaps, may be found practically useful in 
carrying out the method of interpretation above alluded 
to. l^ot to be unnecessarily minute, we may first 
specify, with illustrations, four rules or principles, two 
of which relate rather more to the letter, two rather 
more to the spirit and applications of it. Whether we 
need any further rule will be best seen as ^YQ proceed. 
The first rule is an extremely obvious one, yet a 
rule which, if it had been always followed, would have 
spared the Church a large amount of bitterness and 
controversy. It is simply this, — Ascertain as clearly 
as it may he possible the literal and grammatical "mean- 
ing of the words : in other words, ascertain first what is 
the ordinary lexical meaning of the individual words ; 
and next, what, according to the ordinary rules of syn- 
tax, is the first and simplest meaning of the sentence 
which they make up. . . . "We almost turn away with a 
smile from such a thread-bare rule, and yet there is real- 
ly no rule that has been less followed in the interpreta- 
tion of the New Testament ; and none which in spite of 
all boasted recent improvement, it is more necessary 
calmly to restate and enhance. The full force of Her- 
mann's almost indignant protest"^ against the principles, 
or rather absence of all principles, on which the New 

* 111 his edition of * Yiger's Idioms/ p. 788. 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTURE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 49X 

Testament was interpreted during all the earlier portions 
of liis life, is now happily rendered somewhat nnneces- 
saiy. A pupil of the great scholar was among the first 
to restore tlie more reverent and accurate exegesis of 
an earlier day, and since that time there has been a 
continuance of efforts in the same direction. Still it 
must be clear to every quiet observer, that there is a 
strong desire evinced in many quarters to evade the 
rule, and, under cover of escape from pedantry, to en- 
deavour to make Scripture mean what w^e think, or 
what we wish, not what it really says to us. The mode 
of procedure is simple, but effective. We are first 
told, as Chrysostom told us long ago,* that we are to 
catch the spirit of the author, and next invited to take 
a step onw^ard, and do what that great interpreter neither 
did nor sanctioned — rectify by the aid of our own " veri- 
fying faculty" the imperfect utterance of words of 
which it is assumed we have caught the real and in- 
tended meaning. 'No mode of interpretation is more 
completely fascinating than this intuitional method, 
none that is more thoroughly welcome to the excessive 
self-sufiiciency in regard to Scriptural interpretation 
of which we are now having so much clear and so 
much melancholy evidence. To sit calmly in our studies, 
to give force and meaning to the faltering utterances 
of inspired men, to correct the tottering logic of an 
Apostle, to clear up the misconceptions of an Evange- 
list, and to do this without dust and toil, without exposi- 
tors and without Yersiolis, without anxieties about the 
meanings of particles, or humiliations at discoveries 
of lacking scholarship, — to do all this, thus easily and 
serenely, is the temptation held out ; and the weak, the 
vain, the ignorant, and the prejudiced are clearly prov- 
ing unable to resist it. Hence the necessity of a re- 
turn to first principles, however homely they appear. 

To set forth, if need be, still more clearly the prac- 
tical value of the foregoing rule, let us take a few, al- 
most chance-met examples, in wdiich attention to gram- 
matical accuracy often serves to remove difiiculties or 

* See Chrysostom, * Commeut on Gal.', torn, x., p. 801 B (ed. Beued. 2). 



492 ^i^s "^0 FAITH. p:s8AY IX 

^lisappreliensions of old standing, and that, too, in 
qnestions of considerable importance. Let lis observe, 
for instance, bow an attention to the force of a tense 
removes all possible difficulty from sncb a verse as 
Acts ii. 47, and adds a deepened significance to the 
weighty words we find in such passages as 2 Cor. ii. 15. 
How simply, yet how instructively, the simple parti- 
ciples place the two classes before lis, each under its 
aspects of progress and development, each capable of 
reversed attitudes and directions, but each at the time 
of consideration wending its way ; the one silently 
moving onward to light and to life, the other turning 
its sad steps to darkness and to death ! The mere tense 
is in itself a sermon and a protest : a sermon of blended 
warning, consolation, and hope, to those who will pause 
to meditate on its significance ; a protest, and a very 
strong protest, against those who tell us that the exist- 
ence of " two classes of men animated by two oppos- 
ing principles," though the teaching of Scripture, " is 
contrary to the teaching of experience." Let us ob- 
serve again how, upon a due recognition of the very 
same grammatical fact, the imputation of mistaken ex- 
pectations in an Apostle (1 Thess, iv. 17) becomes al- 
most wholly wiped away, — how some details of the 
Last Supper {Belirvov fyivofiivov, John xiii. 2 : even with 
the ordinary reading fyevofxivov, the correct translation 
removes difficulties) supposed to be conflicting or im- 
possible to arrange, admit of easy and natural expla- 
nation ; and hoAV, to take a last instance, the innocent 
but pointless imagery of the "cloven" tongues (Acts 
ii. 3) passes at once into something pertinent and in- 
telligible, and especially consonant with the workings 
of that Eternal Spirit that divideth "to every man 
severally as He will." Under the application of similar 
principles of accuracy, much of the verbal difficulty 
disappears in Mark xi. 13, the true force of the apa 
combined with the known fact of leaves being posterior 
to the fruit, making the reader feel how it was tire un- 
seasonable display that led to the inference, and how 
the Saviour drew nigh to see if an inference so just was 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEKPEETATION. 493 

to be substantiated. To add two or three more instan- 
ces : the great exegetical difficulty in John xx. 17 ap- 
pears modified, if not removed, by taking into consid- 
eration the tense of the verb ainov (not a-y^r)) ; a train 
of profound speculation is suggested by the accurate 
translation of one word in Col. ii. 15 {aireKSvordfievo^;), 
and relations, if not established, yet rendered probable 
between the act specified in that mysterious clause and 
the last three hours of darkness on Grolgotha. The 
recent controversy relative to the precept in Matt. v. 
32 is almost settled when we pause to recognize the 
difference between the nature of the predications re- 
spectively conveyed b;^ the participle with and the 
participle without the article; and, to conclude with an 
instance of a similar application of the same grammat- 
ical principle, a very great amount of difficulty is re- 
moved in the interpretation of the very obscure pas- 
sage, 1 Pet. iii. 18 seq., if, besides adopting the true 
reading irvevjjbari (not tw TrvevfjuarL, I^eo.) and referring 
it to the Saviour's human spirit, we also observe that the 
participle aireLOrjaaaiv involves no direct predication 
{'Hoho were"), but partially discloses the reason of the 
gracious procedure {^''inasmuch as they were"), and 
causes the difficulty ever felt in the specification of this 
one class in some degree to disappear. 

We now pass to a second rule, equally simple and 
homely with that which we have just considered and 
exemplified, and to which it may be considered to 
form a kind of supplement or corollary. It is, in fact, 
involved in the very definition of the true method of 
interpreting Scripture, and is simply as follows : — Illus- 
trate, wherever possible, hy reference to history, tojpog- 
rapJiy, and antiquities. 

On a rule so very natural and obvious little more 
need be said than this, that the ordinary reader can 
scarcely form any conception of the strangely different 
aspects which many of the leading events in Scripture 
— for example, many of the scenes in our Lord's life — 
will be found to assume when the rule is carefully ob- 
served. We may especially remark this in reference 



494 -^^^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

to illustrations from topography. To modern travellers 
in Palestine the student of Scripture is under obliga- 
tions which as yet have not by any means been fully 
recognized. By the aid of their narrative we can 
sometimes almost place ourselves in the position of the 
first beholders, and see the whole scene of mystery or 
mercy disclose itself before our eyes. The Triumphal 
Entry becomes almost an event in which we ourselves 
have borne a part when we read the narrative with all 
the illustrations that have been furnished by the trav- 
eller or the antiquary. We can feel ourselves almost 
led to the spot where the opening view of the Holy 
City called forth the first shouts of the jubilant multi- 
tude ; we can realize the strange pause, and feel the 
naturalness of the transition from meek triumph to 
outgushiug tears, when some turn in the rocky road^ 
made the City of the Great King rise up suddenly, 
eveiX as the modern traveller tells us it still is found to 
do, in all its full extent, and in all that stateliness and 
beauty which was so soon to pass away. All the scenes 
near to or connected with the Lake of Gennesareth will 
be found to be brought home to us by any of the better 
recent descriptions of the locality, in a manner and to 
a degree that we could scarcely have conceived possi- 
ble beforehand. We seem, for example, to appreciate, 
for the first time in all its fulness, the allusion to the 
" city on a hill " (Matt. v. 14) when we are told that 
from the horned hill that has been lately almost agreed 
on as the probable scene of the Sermon on the Mount, 
the heights on which Safed stands are distinctly visible, 
and form the striking object in the distant landscape. 
"We feel, again, the force of the Karep-q in Luke viii. 23, 
when we recall what we may perhaps have read but 
yesterday of the low-lying lake, and the deep-cut ravines 
and gorges in the vast and naked plateau behind, down 
which the storm- wind rushes as fiercely and as continu- 
ously as of old."^ We pause with interest on what 
otherwise might have seemed a mere question of criti- 

* See tire remarkably interesting description in Dr. Thomson's 'The 
Land and the Book,' vol.'ii,, p. 32. 



i 



Essay IX.l SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 



495 



cal detail, when we read in the traveller's journal that 
round a few scattered ruins in a lonely wady still 
lingers a name wdiich brings up the Gergesa of the 
first Evangelist's narrative, and which almost forces us 
to muse on the extreme naturalness of the circumstance 
that he who knew the lake so well should almost in- 
stinctively be specific, and that the other two narrators 
should use names of a wider reference, and more famil- 
iarly known to their Greek or their Eoman readers.^ 
How interesting again, in the hands of an interpreter 
who will make it his duty to gather up all the items of 
antiquarian information, is the narrative of the Lord's 
presence among the Doctors in the Temple, or even the 
briefly mentioned circumstances of His hastened Burial! 
How well an expositor like Meyer, wdio never fails to 
use this mode of illustration in a very telling way, 
brings at once up before us the scene and circumstance 
of the healing of the paralytic ! How the narrative 
gains in freshness and interest ; how much nearer we 
seem brought to the past ! Till we made use of this 
form of illustration, the events of the Gospel history, 
to use the words of a popular writer when comment- 
ing on this very subject, are almost regarded as if they 
had taken place in heaven : now they seem, as they 
truly were, done on this very work-day earth we tread 
on, under circumstances which the mind can be brought 
fully to realize, and amid scenes wiiich, if the bodily 
eye has not beheld, the imagination can readily depict 
to itself when stimulated and quickened by the narra- 
tive of the graphic observer. The real and vital effect 
that is thus produced on the heart, — especially of the 
young, — the positive increase to our faith that is sup- 
plied by this mode of illustration, has been far too 
much undervalued by the modern interpreter. 

A third rule of very great importance, and of a 
very wide range of application, may be stated as fol- 
lows : — Develop and enunciate the meaning under the 
limitations assigned hy the context^ or, in other words, 
Interpret contextiially . 

t See Thomson, * The Land and the Book,' vol. ii., p. 33 seq. 



496 ^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

The value of tliis rule and its true and real impor- 
tance will be sensibly felt in all the various forms of 
applying Scripture, and giving its doctrines or precepts 
their true and proper signihcance. As we have al- 
ready remarked, the present rule has rather more to do 
with the spirit and general sentiment of the passage 
than with the immediate elucidation of the letter. Its 
application, however, is extremely varied and exten- 
sive. In really numberless cases we liave-^^nothing to 
guide us in our decisions except the connexion and the 
general aspect of the passage. Whenever we are in 
difficulty as to the justice or pertinence of a deduction, 
or find, as we often do find, that grammatical consider- 
ations leave us in a state of uncertainty, the context is 
that which acts as the final arbiter. Our rule has thus 
two great uses, — the one on the negative side, the other 
on the affirmative. Under the first aspect, it serves to 
restrain improper deductions or applications ; under 
the second, it helps in deciding between two or more 
competing interpretations, each supposed to be gram- 
matically tenable. We will give a few examples of its 
use and application in both cases. To take a first in- 
stance, is it often that a text has been considered as 
more thoroughly inclusive in its application than the 
latter part of Rom. xiv. 23 (" for whatsoever is not of 
faith is sin")? Is there any text that in certain con- 
troversies is more frequently appealed to as final and 
absolute ? The mere Englisli reader sees in the very 
argumentative mode in which the words are introduced, 
a strong confirmation of the axiomatic character of the 
words, and estimates their force, and extends their ap- 
plication accordingly. The inaccuracy of the transla- 
tion of the particle (Se) that connects the words with 
what precedes seems to make certain what might 
otherwise have appeared doubtful, and the clause is 
used without hesitation in its full and unlimited force. 
On the exact extent of the application of such a state- 
ment, it may not be easy, nor indeed are we called 
upon, to express any very definite 023inion ; but with 
regard to its plain, primary, and general meaning, we 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 497 

can scarcely be in difficulty or hesitation. "When we 
look back at the context and consider the subject-mat- 
ter, we may surely say, without fear of contradiction, 
that the words in the passage before us were not meant 
to be applied to every imaginable case, but to be re- 
stricted to scruples or cases of conscience that bear 
some analogy to the instances which the Apostle is 
discussing. Take, again, on the other side, such a text 
as Phil. ii. 12. The concluding clause is doubtless 
most useful as a corrective to the many unlicensed 
estimates of the course of the Divine procedure in 
man's salvation, but to dwell upon such a text as in 
any degree favouring the idea that, in the fullest sense 
of the words, our salvation is in our own hands, is sim- 
ply to ignore the important fact that the next verse 
supplies the confirmatory ground (yap) of the com- 
mand, by stating that it is God that supplies both the 
will and the energy. To take a last instance : Can 
anything really be more unreasonable than what has 
been lately said about our practical neglect of certain 
commands given by our Lord, especially such a com- 
mand as Matt. V. 34 ? If we look only at the verse by 
itself, dislocated from the context, it might reasonably 
be thought to be a command which was designed to 
include every form of adjuration, judicial or otherwise. 
When, however, we look at the verse in its proper con- 
nexion, the limitation becomes apparent, — "Earco Be 6 
X6709 v/jLcov, Nal vat, Ou ov (ver. 37). Surely, without 
any casuistry or subtilty, these last words, with their 
plainly implied reference to general life and conversa- 
tion, may be rightly urged by the interpreter as show- 
ing the true and real aspects of the prohibition, and 
may exempt the Saviour from the charge of having, by 
an acceptance of the form of adjuration used by Caia- 
phas {^v etTra?, Matt. xxvi. 64), practically violated his 
own command.* 

To exemplify the second aspect of the rule, we may 
take almost any disputed text that suggests itself to the 

* See Archdeacon France, * The Esample of Christ and Service of Christ, 
p. 109. 



498 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX 

memory, and we shall at once see the use and applica- 
tion of the rule. Let its take, for instance, the con- 
tested words Sea t?}? TeKvojovia^, 1 Tim. ii. 15. Here 
we have at least two competing translations : the one 
which gives the substantive a somewhat vague but 
still plausible -application, the other which connects it 
with the great Promise. The article, especially when 
thus present after a pre^^osition, throws some weight in 
the scale ; the context, in which the allusion is special- 
ly to Gen. iii., and to the circumstances of woman's 
first transgression, seems to decide the question. So, 
again, to take another example out of the same Epistle, 
it ha*s long been doubted whether the command in ch. 
V. 22, refers to Ordination or to Absolution. In favour 
of the former there is a very general consent among 
the oldest and best interpreters, and much may be 
lu'ged in its favour ; when, however, we carefully con- 
sider the context, the preponderance seems so much on 
the side of the latter, that, in spite of the amount of 
authority on the other side, we shall perhaps find it 
difiicult to resist coming to the decision to which a 
due observance of the rule of contextual interpretation 
seems certainly to lead us. To take a last instance : the 
exact meaning of the formula EoKL/j-d^ecv tcl hia^epovTa, 
used on two occasions by St. Paul (Pom. ii. 18, Phil. i. 
10), has always been considered very doubtful, owing 
to the difi'erences of meaning which each of the two 
verbs will fairly admit of. As far as lexical usage 
goes, the words may be understood to imply a discrim- 
ination between things that are difi:erent, or a proving, 
and thence approval, of what is excellent. Which 
meaning are we to adopt? In the first passage where 
the words are used we have but little to guide us either 
way ; but in Phil. i. 9, the prayer for an increase of 
love in knowledge and moral perception expressed in 
the preceding verse seems to decide us in favour of the 
latter view, — love being more naturally shown in ap- 
proval of what is excellent, and so worthy of love, than 
in a mere discrimination between elements or princi- 
ples that involve distinctions or degrees of difi'erence. 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPEETATION. 499 

We now come to the fourth rule, which, as the very 
terms in whicli it is expressed will sufficiently show,^ 
is of an importance not inferior to that of any one of 
those which have preceded. It may be thus expressed : 
1)1 every passage elicit the fall significance of all 

details. 

The rule seems to speak for itself. Under one aspect 
it bears a kind of supplemental relation to the iirst and 
second rules; under another it will be found to assist 
in applications of the third rule, as being frequently 
conceiMied with the meanings of connecting particles, 
and so with the contextual relations of the passage, and 
its general logical or historical drift. It thus, though 
at first sight a mere rule of detail and of the letter, has 
much to do with the spirit of the passage, and will be 
found eminently useful in suggesting deductions. As 
the third rule served to regulate the applications of 
Scripture, so this fourth rule will be found to have 
much to do with the incidental inferences which may 
be drawn from it. Further comments seem unneces- 
sary. Let this one remark, however, be made, — that 
the rule, besides being obviously a rule of common 
sense, is really, in the case of the Scripture, a rule of 
necessity and duty. If we believe the Scripture to be 
inspired of God, then it surely follows that we must 
never rest satisfied till we have elicited the fullest and 
most complete significance of every item of the heav- 
enly Revelation thus mercifully vouclisafed to us. It 
becomes positive unfaithfulness not to dwell upon every 
clause, every word, every particle, if we have any real 
and heart-whole belief that what we are permitted to 
read are indeed, as they were rightly termed by an 
Apostolical Father, "the true sayings of the Holy 
Ghost." It is not that we are hampered with any 
theory of verbal or mechanical inspiration ; it is not 
that we completely sympathize w^ith the somewhat re- 
stricted view (noble, however, in its very restrictedness) 
of a great Biblical critic"^ of our own day, that every 
individual word of Scripture is written by the very 

* Dr. Tregelles, Preface to * The Book of Revelation.' 



500 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

finger of God; it is simply because we know that in 
eveiy case words are the appointed media of ideas and 
sentiments, and believe, in the case of Scriptm^e, that 
both the ideas are heaven-sent and the sentiments in- 
spired. Knowing this, and believing this, can we deem 
it otherwise than our highest duty and privilege to 
exhaust the fullest significance of the outward letter, 
when it contains enshrined in it an inward spirit thus 
holy and Divine ? 

To come to examples. The first and largest class 
of cases which may be alluded to, as exemplifying the 
value and usefulness of the rule, are those- in which 
much depends on the true force and meaning of the 
various connecting particles, whether of cause, infer- 
ence, or consequence. These, however, we must be 
content merely to allude to, as examples of this kind 
can scarcely be adduced without fuller remarks on the 
general bearings of the passage than our limits will 
permit. Let one instance, however, be given, and that 
in ane of the most important of the doctrinal passages 
of the I^ew Testament, — Phil. ii. 6. Here it is scarcely 
too much to say that the interpretation turns mainly on 
the proper recognition of the use and force of aWa 
when following a negative, and on the remembrance 
that in such cases it marks a full and clear antithesis 
between two members of a clause, "not this — hut that." 
Apply this to the passage before us, and we see that 
the words ou% dpirayfiov rj^tjaaro k. t. \. must be under- 
stood to convey some idea distinctly antithetical to 
aWa eavTov eKevcoae, and that no interpretation can 
be safely regarded as admissible in which this condition 
is not fully satisfied. Let this one example be sufiicient; 
but let it carry with it both a suggestion and a protest : 
a suggestion, that in many a contested passage similar 
methods of grammatical generalization may be applied 
with equal simplicity and success ; and a protest against 
mere assumptions that the particles of the ^ew Testa- 
ment can ever be safely neglected, or quietly disposed 
of as mere " excrescences " of a vitiated style. 

A second and laro-e class of instances to which the 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 5Q2 

rule applies, are passages in which simple and com- 
paratively insigniticant details are found, when properly 
considered, to supply some fact of real historical inter- 
est. The Gospels, especially, supply us with a vast list 
of striking and suggestive examples. To name only a 
few. Of what importance, historically considered, is 
the simple addition of the word 'IepovcraXr]fjb in Luke 
V. 17, as showing the quarter whence the spies came, 
and marking, throughout this portion of the nan-ative, 
that most of the charges and machinations came, not 
from the natives of Galilee, but from emissaries from 
a hostile centre ! What a picture does the riv irpodjcov 
avTov^ of Mark x. 32 present to us of the Lord's bearing 
and attitude in this His last journey, and how fully it 
explains the iOafi^ovvTo which follows! How expres- 
sive is the single word KaOrj^evai (Matt, xxvii. 61) in 
the narrative of the Lord's burial, as depicting the 
stupefying grief that left others to do what the sitters- 
by might in part have shared in ! How full of wondrous 
significance is the notice of the state of the abandoned 
grave-clothes in the rock-hewn sepulchre (John xx. 7) ! 
what mystery is there in the recorded position and atti- 
tude of the heavenly watchers (ver. 12) ! What a real 
force there is in the simple numeral in the record of the 
two mites which the widow cast into the treasury ! she 
might have given one (in spite of what Schoettgen sa^^s 
to the contrary) ; she gave her all. How the frightful 
ea of the demoniac (Luke iv. 34) tells almost pictorially 
of the horror and recoil which was ever felt by the 
spirits of darkness when they came in proximity to our 
Saviour (comp. Matt. viii. 29 ; Mark i. 23, v. 7 ; Luke 
viii. 28), and what light and interest it throws upon the 
KOi 18q)v k. t. X. of Mark ix. 20 in the case of the de- 
moniac boy ! Again, of what real importance is the 
simple iTopevOeh both in 1 Peter iii. 19 and 22 ! How 
it hints at a literal and local descent in one case, and 
how it enables us to cite an Apostle as attesting the 
literal and local ascent in the other ! When we com- 
bine the latter with the dve(f>6p6To of Luke xxiv. 51 
(a passage undoubtedly genuine), and pause to mark 



5Q2" AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

the tense, can we sliare in any of the modern difficulties 
that have been felt about the actual, and eo to say 
material, nature of the heavenly mystery of the Lord's 
Ascension ? 

We pause, but only to pass onward by a very slight 
transition to a third class of passages in which impor- 
tant deductions may be made from details which an 
ordinary reader might think of the most trivial or acci- 
dental nature. Who, for instance, would take much 
notice of the order in which certain provinces are 
enumerated in 1 Peter i. 1 ? and yet, from the general 
direction the order involves (East to West), the locality 
of the writer has been surmised at, and an item supj)lied 
toward settling the geographical question in chap. v. 13 
of the same Epistle. Who, again, w^ould be likely to 
pause much on the fact that Samaria was placed in 
order before Galilee in Luke xvii. 11? and yet, unless 
we adopt a very unnatural explanation of the passage, 
the order may be considered as placing the verse in 
connection with John xi. 54:, and as pointing to the in- 
teresting fact that the last journey of our Lord was a 
kind of farewell-circuit, which, beginning from Ephraim, 
extended through Samaria, Galilee, and Persea, and 
terminated at Bethany and Jerusalem. Few perhaps 
would at first sight be inclined to pause long on the 
words ipxofievo9 airo aypov used both by St. Mark 
(ch. XV. 21), and St. Luke (ch. xxiii. 26) in reference to 
Simon of Gyrene ; and yet they supply some ground 
for drawing the inference that, in the earlier part of 
the day referred to, field-work had been done, and con- 
sequently that it was not Msan 15, but IN'isan 14, and 
that thus, even according to the Synoptical Evangelists, 
the Lord celebrated the Last Supper on the day pre- 
ceding the legal Passover. Again, would not the term 
" green grass " (Mark vi. 39) seem to imply but little ? 
and yet this specification of the graphic Evangelist 
exactly harmonizes with what we learn from another 
Evangelist (John vi. 4), viz., that the time was spring, 
and further renders the supposition that the rich plain 
at the north-eastern corner of the Lake of Gennesareth 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPRETATION. 593 

was tlie scene of the Feeding of the Fiv^e Thousand in 
every respect wortliy of attention. Lastly, the agitated 
words of Mary Magdalene to St. Peter (John xx. 2) 
might be thought of very little use in helping to decide 
between conflicting views on the harmony of this por- 
tion of the narrative: yet from the plural olBafiev, when 
compared with olSa, ver. 13, we seem justified in draw- 
ing the important inference that though St. John only 
specifies Mary Magdalene as having gone to the tomb, 
he was nevertheless perfectly well aware, that, even as 
she herself implies, there were others who went with 
her to do honour to the Holy Body. 

Our four rules of interpretation have now at length 
been stated and illustrated. That they are important, 
and of considerable practical use, w^ill perhaps have 
now been made plain by the examples which have 
been adduced. From these we shall probably have per- 
ceived that the rules have not only their positive but 
their negative uses ; and that, while the first two rules 
are serviceable in tending to ensure precision and stim- 
ulate research, the second and third are no less useful 
in restraining prejudice, and checking that im]3atient 
and over-hasty method of reading the Scripture which 
will not pause to seek in the text for the associations 
that are really to be found there. Further, the rules 
proposed have apparently the merit of being simple 
and obvious. They involve no refinements, and may 
be expressed in very few words : all the four being, in 
fact, reducible to one general canon — Interpret gram' 
tnatically^ historically^ contextiially ^ and minidely. 

But the real point of interest has yet to be dis- 
cussed. 

On carefully considering the nature and character- 
istics of the above rules, it must be plain to the thought- 
ful reader that, though useful and adequate exponents 
of the grammatical and historical method of interpret- 
ing Scripture, they are still rules that might be applied 
with nearly equal success to the interpretation of any 
other collection of ancient documents. There is noth- 
ing in any one of them that makes it especially a rule 



504 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX- 

of interpreting Scripture. We have really to a certain 
extent been agreeing to interpret Scripture like anj 
other book. It is true that we have advocated a greater 
j)unctilionsness than would be thought necessary even 
for interpreting Plato or Aristotle ; it is true that we 
have pleaded for a minuteness of attention to detail, 
which in the case of an ordinary Greek writer would 
be tiresome and pedantic ; still there is plainly no 
feature in any one of the rules that can fairly be con- 
sidered as of such an unique character as we should ex- 
pect to find in the rules for the interpretation of an 
imi que book ; and, if our premises are right that Scrip- 
ture is really unlike any other book in numerous points, 
we should certainly expect to find in numerous points 
that our present rules are insufficient and incomj^lete. 

And so we find them. 

There are at least three large classes of passages in 
which they fail in ascertaining for us the true mind of 
Scripture ; and these very failures, it will be observed, 
force upon us additional rules, gradually more and 
more of an unique character, till we find ourselves at 
last frankly accepting the yet lacking general rule of 
true Scriptural interpretation. But let us not antici- 
pate. We have said there are at least three classes of 
passages for which the above rules are not sufficient. 
These may be defined roughly, as (1) passages of geoi- 
eral difficulty, where the context gives us no means of 
deciding between two or more competing translations, 
of equal correctness in point of logic or grammar ; (2) 
passages of doctrinal difficulty, where either the tenor 
of the declaration is doubtful, or where opposing de- 
ductions have been made as to the doctrine actually 
conveyed ; (3) passages of what maybe termed theolog- 
ical difficulty, i. e. where the fact specified or the prin- 
ciple referred to involves mysterious relations between 
things human and Divine which are at best very im- 
perfectly known to us. In all these three cases, espec- 
ially the two last, the rules we have discussed, though 
of the greatest use in clearing away preliminary diffi- 
culties, often leave the main difficulty untouched. Let 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 595 

lis illustrate this by a few examples, and feel out by 
degrees for the further rule or rules that are still need- 
ed for our guidance. 

(1.) Let us take for our first example a clause from 
a passage of general difficulty, and indisputably of 
great importance, the opening verses of St. Paul's 
Epistle to the Ephesians. In the third verse much 
turns on the exact meaning of the peculiar term iv rot? 
eTTovpavioL^, and (to narrow the question by leaving 
unnoticed obviously untenable interpretations) on a de- 
cision of the question, — whether, with the Greek ex- 
positors, we are to give the words an ethical reference, 
or whether, with the Oriental versions, we are to con- 
ceive the words only to refer to locality. The context 
does not seem definitely to favour either view ; and 
grammatical considerations, it is almost unnecessary to 
add, leave the matter equally undecided. In other 
words, our first and third rules, on which, in all cases 
of local difficulty, we almost wholly rely, here fail to 
guide us. How then are we to decide ? If we turn to 
the best modern commentaries we shall find, and right- 
ly find, that the local meaning is now very generally 
adopted, such seeming certainly to be the meaning in 
the other passages in the Epistle (ch. i. 20, ii. 6, iii. 10, 
vi. 12) where the formula occurs. In a word the usus 
scrihendi of the author has decided the question. . . . 
The meaning of the difficult and similarly ambiguous 
expression aToixetcL rod fcocrfiov (Gal. iv. 8) is usually 
decided, though conversely, on the same principle ; a 
comparison of the passage with Col. ii. 8, 20 seeming 
to cause the arguments in favour of the ethical mean- 
ing (rudimentary religious teaching of a non-Christian 
character) decidedly to preponderate. . . Somewhat 
similar principles are used in deciding on the meaning 
of the doubtful irapaOrjKr^v {Rec. irapa/caraOijfcrjv) in 1 
Tim. vi. 20 compared with 2 Tim. i. 12, 14. . . In a 
much more difficult passage to which we have already 
alluded, Col. ii. 15, a great part of the obscurity rests 
on the first clause, and especially on the meaning of 
the word aireKhvadfjievo^;, In spite of the contextual ar- 
22 



506 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

gument that may be drawn from the meaning of the 
associated participle Opia^/Sevaa^, the translation of the 
Ynlgate ('' exsj^olians ") and indeed of our own Author- 
ized Version, is now commonly given up by careful 
scholars in favour of the more grammatically accurate, 
but certainly at first sight less intelligible " exuens se " 
of the Claromontane and Coptic Versions. What has 
led to this decision? To a certain extent grammatical 
precision, but mainly the undoubted use of the word 
by the Apostle a few verses later (Col. iii. 9) in the 
second of the two senses just specified. 

But the examples above alluded to have had main- 
ly to do w^ith verbal difiiculties. Exactly the same, 
however, might be shown in cases of difiiculties in the 
sentiment conveyed. Of this let 1 Pet. iii. 19 and ch. 
iv. 6 be briefly specified as examples. They are sister- 
texts, and so clearly allude to a kindred mystery, that 
no interpreter of the one passage would fail to refer to 
the other and be guided by it, as supplying him with 
the most natural and indeed authoritative illustration. 
If, for example, he felt swayed by the local term tto- 
pevOeU in the first passage, he would probably find 
much difficulty in believing that the term veKpoh in 
the second passage was to be referred to the spiritually 
dead, those '*' dead in trespasses and sins " (Eph. ii. 1), 
rather than to the dead in the ordinary and physical 
meaning of the term. If one passage has a definite 
and local reference, so apparently has the other. The 
same may be said of the excessively difficult passages 
Col. i. 19 and ch. ii. 9, the latter of which supplies the 
only authoritative hint for the translation of the former. 

Now to what do all these examples point but to 
this, — the admission that difficulties, even of a very 
serious nature, are often to be removed by attending 
to the usus scribendi of the author ; or, in other words, 
the plain and serviceable rule emerges to view, — Let 
the iDviter interpret himself. 

But it will certainly be said, this is exactly what is 
or ought to be done in the case of any other writer 
whose precise meaning we wished to ascertain. True ; 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 597 

but the cliifereuce of the subject-matter makes the two 
cases really very far from identical. In the one case 
the writer may be dealing with subjects in which the 
assumption of a regular and consistent way of express- 
ing himself in reference to them may be deemed per- 
fectly reasonable and natural. In the other case, the 
assumption really amounts to nearly as much as this, — 
the expression of a conviction, that in discussing sub- 
jects often transcending human faculties, and in com- 
municating the mysteries of a revelation from God, the 
writer is consistent with himself. The rule above-men- 
tioned, in the case of one of the 'New Testament writers, 
is really little less than an express recognition of a gen- 
eral and pervading inspiration, — an influence which, 
contrary to what might have been looked for in the 
case of a writer on subjects above man's natural pow- 
ers, kept the writer always in harmony with himself, 
and his words always self explanatory and consistent. 

(2.) But, to pass onward, let us next observe what 
amplifications of the rule are suggested by examples 
of the second class of Scriptural difficulties. Let us be- 
gin with a passage of very great difficulty, principally 
of a doctrinal nature, and one in which interpreters 
have arrived at widely different results, — the descrip- 
tion of the Man of Sin in 2 Thess. ii. 3 seq. Here no 
interpreter would probably fail to refer to the parallel 
supplied by Daniel (ch. xi. 36 seq.), on the one hand, 
and to the description of the characteristics of Anti- 
christ as given by St. John in his first Epistle (ch. ii. 
22, iv. 3 seq.), on the other. The expositor would in 
fact seek for his most trustworthy elucidation of the 
passage before him in two books of Scripture written 
by two authors, a Prophet and an Evangelist, between 
whose dates there w^as probably nearly as great an in- 
terval as 600 years. Does not this point to a tacit am- 
plification of the preceding rule, and does it not, in ef- 
fect, amount to this, — Whe7'e possible, let Scripture in- 
terpret itself, or, in other words. Interpret according to 
the analogy of Scripture f 

If this be stated fairly and correctly, is it not clear 



508 ^^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX, 

that the assumptions that were practically involved in 
the former rule, Let the writer interpret JmnseJf^ become 
still more significant and suggestive? According to the 
obvious tenor of the latter rule, Scripture appears tac- 
itly to be recognized as an organized and harmonious 
whole, all parts of which are so quickened by the same 
life and animated by the same Spirit, that no sentiment 
of any one of the Sacred Writers can ever receive a 
more convincing and trustworthy interpretation than 
that which is supplied by the sentiments or expres- 
sions of another. This, properly considered, practically 
amounts to an admission of the inspiration of Scripture 
of the most clear and decided kind. 

But let us take yet one step further, and consider 
the interpretation of a clause in another passage of doc- 
trinal dilficulty which all will agree in deeming of the 
most profound importance. What is the true meaning 
of the words irpcoToroKo^; 7rd(T7]<; /cr/o-eo)? (Col. i. 15) in 
their reference to the Eternal Son ? Here we have two 
interpretations, widely different, yet both grammati- 
cally tenable, and one (the second) considered merely 
with regard to grammar, perhaps even obvious and 
plausible. According to the one interpretation, our 
Lord would be represented as "begotten before every 
creature," and the reference would be to the eternal 
generation of Christ ; according to the other, it would 
be " first-begotten of every creature," or, as in the Syr- 
iac, " of all creatures," — prior to them in origin, yet a 
created being like themselves. Which view are we to 
take ? Grammar is silent, the context difiicult and not 
decisive (the following iv dvrtp is probably not " hy 
Him"), the reasoning deep and mysterious. The an- 
swer of every calm^ and attentive reader of Scripture 
will probably be promptly given, — " Undoubtedly the 
former." But why ? " Because the whole tenor of 
Scripture is opposed to the latter view." But how can 
this tenor of Scripture be confidently stated? on what 
does the assertion rest ? Is it the result of actual and 
rigorous investigation of the whole of Scripture, or mere 
■reliance on the opinion of the safe side ? '' !N'o, neither 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUKE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 599 

the one nor the other." Then on what is the adoption 
of the former of the two views reallj based ? " On the 
teaching of the Creeds, as the authoritative ex]3ositions 
of the true tenor of Scripture." In other words, the 
example has at last led us to the full expression of the 
rule that has been gradually disclosing itself. Scripture 
itself has at length taught us, by the gentle leading of 
its own difficulties, the true and vital principle of all 
really Scriptural exegesis, — Interjgret according to the 
analogy of Faith. 

And this is the rule. This the rule — carped at, as 
it has been, by the sceptical, disregarded by the self- 
confident, violated by party bias, slighted by the dis- 
loyal, and derided by the profane — to which we have 
at last come, almost by an inductive process, and with 
the aid of which, in conjunction with preceding rules, 
we may even venture to draw near to the third class of 
difficulties, — the great and the deep things of God, 

(3.) Into these, however, we cannot now even at- 
tempt to enter. Our limits, wholly preclude us from 
discussing passages of which each would require not 
only a lengthened consideration of the context, but also 
the introduction of details which would be unsuitable 
in a general essay like the present. To show, however, 
what class of passages we are alluding to, we will pause 
simply to specify a few that now suggest themselves, 
and may partly justify the distinctions above laid down. 
In addition to 1 Pet. iii. 19 and others, above alluded 
to, which perhaps may seem to belong more exactly to 
the present class, let us specify Matt. xxvi. 29, xxvii. 52 ; 
Mark xiii. 32 ; Luke x. 18 ; John xxi. 22 ; Eom. viii. 19 
seq.^ 26, ix. 18 seg. ; 1 Cor. iii. 13, vi. 3, xv. 28 seg. ; 2 
Cor. V. 2 se(i., xii. 2 seg. ; Eph. i. 12, 23, ii. 2 ; Col. i. 19, 
20, 24; 1 Thess. iv. 15 seg. ; Heb. iv. 12, vi. 4; 2 Pet. 
ii, 4, iii. 10 ; Jude 6, 9 ; and, it is necessary to add, the 
greater part of the Book of Pevelation.' 

On one of these passages, however, and on one only, 
let us make a passing comment, and that because the 
passage has been more than once alluded to as a cor- 
rective and counterpoise to what are termed high views 



510 -A.IDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

of the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. The passage 
is Mark xiii. 32, the words of which, whether considered 
in reference to the occasion or to the context, merit, in- 
deed, some higher description than " sim])le and touch- 
ing," and are, as they have always been deemed to be, 
among the most deep and solemn that have ever been 
uttered in the ears of man. Yet if we interpret them 
according to the analogy of Faith, and, let us not fail 
to add, according to the very implied limitations of the 
passage itself, we can feel no difficulty as to their true 
meaning. In the very silent logic of the associated 
terms, the ovBel^, the ol djyeXot ol iv ovpavw, we feel a 
kind of implied circumscription, which seems to prepare 
us for the sense in which we are to understand the cul- 
minating ovhe 6 vl6<^, " none in earth, none in heaven, 
nay not even the Son," in so far as He shares any ele- 
ment in common with either, in so far as He vouch- 
safes to assume iiniteness and corporeity. What we in- 
stinctively surmise as we read the passage, the analogy 
of Scripture and Faith assures us of, — that when the 
Lord thus spake to His four chosen Apostles, He does 
virtually assure us that He was so truly man, that when 
He assumed that nature He assumed it with all its lim- 
itations, and that in that nature He vouchsafed to know 
not what as God He had known from everlasting. Why 
are we to be deterred from this ancient interpretation, 
why are w^e to obelize the words with Ambrose,* or 
regard them as a conventional statement wdth Augus- 
tine,f when they admit of an explanation so simple, 
and so consonant with all that we are told of Him who 
vouchsafed not only to be incarnate, but to increase in 
wisdom, and to be a veritable sharer in all the sinless 
imperfections of humanity ? Is there really any greater 
difficulty in such a passage than in John xi. 83, 35, 
where w^e are told that those holy cheeks were still wet 
with human tears while the loud voice was crying, 
"Lazarus, come forth ! " 

13. This portion of our subject has thus at length 
come to its close. The four rules of interpreting Scrip- 

* 'De Fide,' v. 16 (193). + 'De Genesi contr. Manich,' i. 22 (34). 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 511 

tnre liave received the supplement thej lacked. The 
canon which embraced them has now the addition neces- 
sary to make it applicable to those passages where the 
difficulties are of a doctrinal nature, and, further, even 
to those still deeper passages where the difficulties arise 
from the profound nature of the revelation, and from the 
allusions such passages may contain to m3^steries beyond 
our full powers of comprehension. Scripture interpre- 
tation is now not merely to be grammatical, historical, 
contextual, and minute, but it is to be also — according 
to the analogy of Faith. 

Against such a rule, we are well aware, many an ar- 
gument will be urged, many an exception will be taken. 
We have been told, and we shall often be told again, 
that to interpret by the ITicene or the Athanasian Creed 
is not only to mar the simplicity of Scripture, by bring- 
ing it in contact with what is artificial and technical, 
but consciously to involve ourselves in a plain and pat- 
ent anachronism. 

To such mere assertions, for mere assertions they re- 
ally are, it is not necessary, after what has been said, to 
return any formal answer. It may be enough to make 
the two following remarks, and with them this portion 
of the subject shall be concluded: — First., the charge 
of anachronism may be readily disposed of by observing 
that, in thus interpreting Scripture, we are really inter- 
preting it by what, in a certain sense, is anterior to it, 
viz. the principles of that faith of which Scripture is 
itself the exponent. Ante mare fluctus. What right 
have we to assume that all the early Christian preach- 
ing was only the outpouring of " attachment to a re- 
cently departed friend and Lord " ? With what justice 
can we say that the whole of Christianity was con- 
'tained in the words, " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and thou may est be saved," when, even in the very ear- 
liest of an Apostle's letters, there seems satisfactory 'ev- 
idence (comp. 1 Thess. v. 1, 2 Thess. ii. 5) that deeper 
things were communicated orally to the earliest Chris- 
tian converts than were afterwards committed to writ- 
ing ? Most justly, then, has it been observed that, w^hen 



512 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

we thus appeal to the principles of the faith for our 
guidance in expounding Scriptural difficulty, we are in- 
terpreting, not by " the result of three or four centuries 
of controversy," but by appeals to fixed principles of 
Christian doctrine, the greater part of which were 
known, believed, and acted on in the very earliest age 
of the GospeL"^ In succeeding centuries these funda- 
mental truths may have been couched in terms of great- 
er scientific exactness ; the various controversies of the 
times may have caused the Cliurch to put forth her doc- 
trines in forms more technically accurate or more logic- 
ally precise, but the substance was the same from the 
very first, and it is on that substance that our interpre- 
tation of Scripture is really based, it is to that essential 
truth of which the Church is a pillar, that we make our 
natural and reasonable appeal. 

The second remark is this, that those who are much 
opposed to us in their estimate of the character and in- 
spiration of Scripture, really in efi'ect admit the prin- 
ciple we are contending for. To say nothing of the oc- 
currence on their pages of such terms as '' the analogy 
of Scripture," when the subject is the best mode of 
interpreting it, or of the silent but important admission 
that the principle which " enables us to apply the words 
of Christ and His Apostles" is neither more nor less 
than "the analogy of faith," f — to pass over all these 
tacit and almost instinctive recognitions of the one great 
truth (1 Tim. iii. 15), from which all that has been said 
above comes by way of legitimate deduction, let us 
merely take the rule which others have laid down, and 
fairly consider whether the recommendation to " inter- 
pret Scripture from itself" is not in effect and substance 
plainly identical with much that has been already advo- 
cated in these pages. Such a rule, in the first place, 
involves the very important assumption which we have 
above alluded to, viz., that Scripture is consistent with 
itself, even when such consistency might be appealed 

* See Moberly, Preface to * Sermons on the Beatitudes,' p. Iii. seq., where 
this argument is put forward with great clearness and force. 
t See 'Essays and Reviews/ p. 416. 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUKE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 523 

to as a very evidence of its Divine origin ; and in the 
second place, after every possible limitation — viz., that 
we are to understand it to mean interpreting " like by 
like," — such a rule is still, and must remain, based on 
the recognition of the sound and proper principle that 
Scripture difficulty must be explained consistently with 
Scripture truth. Of this truth the Creeds, especially 
the two shorter, are not only compendious but author- 
itative abstracts, summarily vouched for by the keeper 
of our archives and the upholder of their integrity, the 
Catholic Church of Christ. The same authority might 
justify us in similarly applying much of her own his- 
tory and traditions as illustrative of Holy Scripture, if 
even not deserving the title of an aid in its interpreta- 
tion. It may be sufficient, however, to claim the Creeds 
as authoritative summaries of Scripture, and so author- 
itative guides in interpreting Scripture, being in fact 
themselves the epitome of that from which it has been 
properly conceded that Scripture ought to be illustrated 
and expounded. 

14. The main department of our subject may now 
be considered as brought to its natural conclusion. 
Two portions, however, still remain which require of 
us a passing notice. They are, in fact, the two ex- 
tremes between which the portion of the subject on 
which we have been recently engaged seems to lie 
midway; the one relating exclusively to the laws of 
the letter, the other to the principles of applying the 
spirit, — in a word, the Grammar of the Sacred Text, 
on the one hand, and the various practical applica- 
ti' ns of the fully-ascertained meaning of that Text on 
the other. A few words shall be said on each of these 
portions of our subject, but a few words only, there 
being by no means that amount of misconception and 
error in reference to either of these portions of the 
subject as to that which lies between them. Still a 
few comments may be profitably made on each. 

Let us speak first of the application of Scripture, as 
22* 



514 -^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

this seems most naturally to follow a discussion on the 
interpretation of it, — application, in fact, being nothing 
more than interpretation in its ultimate and most ex- 
tended form. 

The different forms which the application of Scrip- 
ture may assume are obviously as many and as diver- 
sified as the aspects of Scripture itself. We have 
already seen that Scripture involves a system of proph- 
ecies and types; we have recognized, also, that it 
contains a wide range of double meanings even in 
simply historical passages ; and, lastly, we have found 
it to be so pervaded by the Spirit of God, that not 
only in its sentiments, but sometimes even in its very 
words and expressions (see above, p. 468), it is found 
to involve a deep and a Divine significance. These 
three characteristics at once lead to three correspond- 
ing modes of application, on each of which, as being 
one of the three more edifying and practically useful 
modes of applying Scripture, a few comments shall be 
made. 

I. The subject of Prophecy and Typology is, un- 
doubtedly, one of difficulty, and in its practical bear- 
ings and expansions still more so. It is extremely 
difficult to lay down any rules, and yet it is very 
precarious to attempt such methods of applying 
Scripture without some external guidance. In the 
case of unfulfilled prophecy, especially, the temptation 
to indulge in unauthorized speculation is often exces- 
sive. Uneducated and undisciplined minds are com- 
pletely carried away by it, and even the more devout 
and self-i^estrained frequently give themselves up to 
sad extravagances in this form of the application of 
God's "Word. The result is, only too often, that better 
educated and more logical minds, in recoiling from 
what they justly deem unlicensed and preposterous, 
pass over too much into the other extreme, and deem 
jProphecy in every form as a subject far too doubtful 
and debateable ever to fall within the province of 
Scripture application. It is, we fear, by no means too 
much to say, that a great part of the present melan- 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPEETATION. 515 

choly scepticism as to Messianic prophecy is due to 
the ahnost indignant reaction which has been brought 
about by the excesses of apocalyptic interpretation. 
The utmost caution, then, is justly called for. Nay, it 
perhaps would be well if unfulfilled prophecy were 
never to be applied to any other purposes than those 
of general encouragement and consolation. We may 
often be thus made to feel that we are in the midst of 
a providential dispensation, that though our eyes may 
be holden as to the relations of contemporaneous 
events to the future, whether of the Church or of the 
world, we may yet descry certain bold and broad out- 
lines, certain tendencies and developments, which may 
make us wend our way onward, thoughtfully and 
circumspectly, — wayfarers who gaze with ever-deepen- 
ing interest on the contour of the distant hills, even 
though we cannot clearly distinguish the clustered 
details of the nearer and separating plain. But though 
it may thus be wise only to notice unfulfilled prophecy 
in the broadest and most general way, it is far other- 
wise with applications or illustrations derived from 
w^hat has either obviously received its fulfilment, or, 
like Deut. xxviii., is so plainly still receiving it, that 
doubt becomes unreasonable and impossible. In this 
last case, for instance, the mere existence of such a 
prophecy has been with reason appealed to as almost 
sufficient in itself to establish the inspiration of the 
whole associated Pentateuch. More particularly can 
every form of Messianic prophecy be dwelt upon by 
the conscientious interpreter. This, indeed, is the 
loftiest and most blessed application of prophecy, for 
purposes of edification, that man can make. Hereby, 
more especially, are we permitted to realize all the 
deep harmonies between the earlier and the later dis- 
pensation. In the light shed by Messianic prophecy, 
the two covenants seem no longer disunited, but one. 
The Old Testament as it "telleth of Christ that should 
come," blends insensibly into the New, that "telleth of 
Christ that is come," * until both become recognized 

* Compare Hooker, ' Laws of Eccl. Polity/ 1. 14. 4, Yol. i., p. 270 (ed. 
Keble). 



516 ^^^S ^^ FAITH. [Essay IX, 

as organically connected parts of one Divine whole. 
The Scripture is at length seen and felt to be what it 
truly is — one living Book; one, because pervaded by 
the holy presence of one ever-blessed Lord ; living, 
because ever teaching of Him who Himself is the 
Life, and whose "Life is the light of men." 

Li the case of ty;pes^ and all the varied forms of 
supposed typical relations between the Old and New 
Testaments, some greater latitude of application may 
perhaps be permitted. Much, probably, will have to 
be lost to that whicli must sometimes be the only 
guide — the "spiritual understanding" (Col. i. 9) of the 
expounder. Even in such cases, however, it will be 
found desirable to recognize some general fixed prin- 
ciples. Special rules it is never very easy to lay down ; 
but perhaps it may be said that in tracing out types, 
the prudent expounder will do well to observe, or at 
any rate conform to, the general spirit of these two 
rules: First, not positively to assert the existence of 
typical relations between persons, places, or things, 
unless it should appear, either directly or by reason- 
able inference, that such relations are recognized in 
Scripture ; Secondly^ even in the case of apparently 
reasonable inferences from Scripture, not to press the 
typical allusion unless we have the consent of the best 
of the earlier expositors. The use and general bearing 
of each rule shall be briefly exemplified. 

The first rule, it will be easily seen, will be 
especially useful in lopping away all those supposed 
typical meanings which, as we have already seen, 
some even of the soundest of the early interpreters 
were ever discovering even in the simplest incidents of 
the Old Testament. By this rule, lor instance, the 
mystical or typical meaning assigned to Rahab's 
scarlet thread, or to Lot's two daughters, old as they 
may be, and belonging, as these two cases really do, to 
the sub-apostolic age, must still be regarded as at best 
only precarious fancies. By the same rule, too, many 
of the exaggerated attitudes of popular typology will 
become beneficially restrained. While we may enlarge 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 517 

with all confidence not only on such nndonbted his- 
torical types as Adam (Eom. v. 14 ; 1 Cor. xv. 45), or 
Melchizedec (Heb. vii. 3) of one kind, and the Flood 
(1 Pet. iii. 21), or the Ked Sea (1 Cor. x. 2) of another, 
but even on such clear instances as the rite of circum- 
cision (Col. ii. 11), the paschal lamb (1 Cor. v. 7), the 
functions of the High-priest on the Day of Atonement, 
and other things alluded to by the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, we may feel very suspended 
in our judgment as to such an ancient and, at first 
sight, plausible type as Egypt and the evil world. 
The acknowledged typical relations of Canaan and the 
Christian's heavenly home, and of the Eed Sea and 
Baptism, might seem to throw back some probability 
on such a relation between the world which the Chris- 
tian renounces and the place from which Israel was 
called ; but such a type could never be insisted on : no 
argument could ever be built npon it, nor could it 
ever claim to be ranked really higher than an ancient 
and ingenious fancy. Nay, even such an almost self- 
evident type as Isaac, with all its startling coincidences 
of place and circumstances (Gen. xxii. 6 ; John xix. 
17), can scarcely be regarded as definitely resting on 
the authority of Scripture (Heb. xi. 19 does not seem 
to prove it), but can only justly be regarded as an 
inference from its general tenor, though, on the other 
hand, no reasonable expounder in the world could fail 
to accept it as an example that rests on the instinctive 
and unanimous consent of the Church. 

We thus are brought to our second rule, and can 
now see that what otherwise might have seemed super- 
fluous cannot very readily be dispensed Avith. The 
united judgment of the earliest and soundest expositors 
is, we perceive, not wholly to be set aside ; the tradi- 
tion of the Church not to be rejected when the infer- 
ence from Scripture might seem of a doubtful or sus- 
pended character. And if the rule be thus useful in its 
afiirmative, undoubtedly it is so in its negative aspects, 
as serving to repress mere conjecture and ingenuity. 
To conclude with an instance of its negative use, we 



518 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

may allude to an ingenions attempt to connect the cir- 
cumstances mentioned by all the four Evangelists in ref- 
erence to our Lord and Barabbas, -svith the sortition in 
reference to the two goats (Lev. xvi. 5 seq.) on the Day 
of Atonement. At tirst there seems a strange persua- 
siveness in the suggested relations of type to antitype ; 
nay, there might be thought to be some Scriptural basis 
in the similar comparisons that are indicated or hinted 
at (comj:). ch. xiii. 11, 12) in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
The opinion of the early waiters here interposes a salu- 
tary caution. We find that the ceremonies connected 
with tlie scape-goat, and the somewhat similar ceremo- 
nies in the cleansing of the leper (Lev. xiv. 2 seq.) were 
almost unanimously referred alone to Christ, — to Christ, 
as both dying for us, and, by his Eesurrection, living 
again for evermore. The circumstances of the case, it 
was justly argued, required a type which, to be com- 
plete, must necessarily be two-fold, and which, to be 
fully significant, must present two aspects, as it were, 
of the same antitypal mystery. If it be admitted that 
the scape-goat can, by inference, be deemed a Scrip- 
tural type of Christ, it is probable that we shall reject 
the ingenious parallel, and accept the view taken by 
the earlier expositors. 

The substance of the preceding remarks is this, — 
not, by any means, that the typical relations between 
the Old and Kew Testaments are few and limited, for 
it is really probable that they are much more numer- 
ous and extensive even than they have been supposed 
to be, but simply that the number of examples of such 
relations that rest on an undoubted Scriptural basis is 
not lar^'e, and hence that caution is required in press- 
ing as types what cannot actually be proved to be at 
all more than ingenious and plausible analogies. In a 
word, we may frequently and beneficially use typology 
by way of illustration, but it is not often that we can 
use it as the foundation of an argument. 

II. If caution be required in dealing with types, 
still more so is it necessary in attempting to set forth 
second meanings in passages, historical or otherwise, 



EssatIX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATIOK 5^9 

which have not been authoritatively declared to in- 
volve them. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the 
passages which may have further and deeper meanings 
than appear on the surface are by no means of uncom- 
mon occurrence. In a meditative reading, even of a 
few chapters, we can scarcely fail to meet with passage 
after passage which we feel, almost instinctively, to be 
fraught with a significance much beyond that of the 
mere letter, but in the case of which we can never 
positively assert the existence of such a meaning, much 
less state what we deem it to be. In the 'New Testa- 
ment, the passages which calm and reasonable exposi- 
tors have adduced as involving second and deeper 
meanings are probably under ten, and out of these the 
more plausible, — the reference of the Parable of the 
Good Samaritan to our Lord, the reference of John vi. 
85 to one Sacrament, and of John xix. 34 seq. to both ; 
and, lastly, the significance of the position of the two 
thieves (Luke xxiii. 38), — are all so debatable that 
more perhaps can never be said than this, that they 
serve to render it presumable that there are many pas- 
sages which may have second meanings; not, however, 
that they substantiate their existence. On such a sub- 
ject then, no rule can be laid down; this only may be 
said, that he who reads Scripture under the persuasion 
that it often contains depths not yet sounded, and mean- 
ings not yet ascertained, will certainly read it with far 
greater spiritual profit to himself than he who believes 
he has fully arrived- at the mind of Scripture when he 
has made out the mere outward meaning of the letter. 
The subject involves many curious details, such as the 
recurrence of certain numbers ( of e. g. " forty" in several 
incidents both of the Old and of the New Testaments), 
and the trace of a supposed mystical economy of times 
and seasons ; — but with -these the wise and reverent in- 
terpreter will never overmuch busy himself. He may 
feel and know that God is a God of order, and not of 
confusion, and he may see much in details in which 
that order seems plainly to be traceable, but he will 
never seek to prove it by an appeal to facts that may 



520 ^^^S "^^ FAITH. [Essay IX. 

probably have no sncli relations as those ascribed to 
them, or by urging principles which all graver thinkers 
would not hesitate to pronounce as illusory or unde- 
monstrable. 

III. The same caution must obviously be displayed 
in the third form of Scriptural ajDplication, — practical 
deductions from Scriptural statements. The very prin- 
ciple on which such a mode of applying Scripture is 
based, viz., that Scripture is divinely inspired, and that 
deductions may be safely made from what are thus, 
without metaphor, the very Oracles of God, alike indi- 
cates the necessity of such caution, and hints at its re- 
quired amount. In all passages, doctrinal or otherwise, 
in which the meaning seems to be clear and unques- 
tionable, deductions obviously may be made of such a 
kind as to assume almost the aspect of definite and 
authoritative revelations. In other passages, in which 
the difficulties are more of what we have termed a the- 
ological character, positive deductions will often be 
found to be not only precarious, but presumptuous. 
They may sometimes be permitted for private edifica- 
tion, being in fact a sort of expanded form of religious 
meditation, but can rarely or ever be safely pressed 
upon others, or be profitably drawn out into systematic 
developments. 

To illustrate what we mean by an example : we 
may rightly and properly make some deductions of a 
definite character from such a passage as 1 Thess. iv. 
15-17. There both the plain and distinct statements 
of the passage, and the certain fact that this was really 
a definite revelation for definite purposes of Christian 
comfort (ver. 13, 18), seem to warrant our drawing in- 
ferences and recognizing harmonies with other passages 
of Scripture which, however strange and mysterious 
they may appear, are yet to be considered certain and 
legitimate. We seem to have the fullest right for assur- 
ing ourselves that there will be a first resurrection (ver. 
16 compared with Rev. xx. 5) in which the elect will, 
alone participate, that the rising of the holy dead will 
precede the assumption of the holy living, and that 



EsaAYlX.] SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPKETATION. 52I 

the latter, after the similitude of the Lord's Ascen- 
sion (Acts i. 9), robed round by upbearing clouds {iv 
vecpeXat^), perchance the mystic chambers of the last 
change (1 Cor. xv. 62), will leave earth, and rise to 
meet the Lord in the air. Such statements may seem 
revolting to the false and morbid spiritualism of our 
times, but they are statements which the gravest ex- 
pounders of an earlier day (while traditions of the true 
meaning of such revelations might yet be lingering in 
the Church) have not shrunk from putting forward, and 
which may be justly regarded as calm, historical con- 
clusions from a deep but historical passage. 

The case is different with such a passage as Matt. 
xxvi. 29. Here w^e may perhaps allow ourselves, with 
all reverence, to express a humble opinion that the 
words may allude to some participations in the ele- 
ments of a new and glorified creation, in which the 
Lord may vouchsafe to be united with His elect ; but 
to say more than this, to draw any deductions as to the 
nature of the resurrection-body, would obviously be in 
the highest degree wild and hazardous. Equally rash 
w^ould it be to draw any definite conclusions from such 
passages as Eph. iii. 9, 10, as to the limits of the knowl- 
edge of angels in reference to the mysteries of salva- 
tion (comp. 1 Peter i. 12), or of the precise part which 
these Blessed Spirits take in human affairs from such 
passages as Matt, xviii. 10, Heb. i. 14, or from the rec- 
ord of such special interpositions as those related in 
Acts V. 19, X. 3, xii. Y, al. Even in passages of a sim- 
pler nature, our real ignorance of the relations between 
the visible and invisible world may prevent our mak- 
ing any positive deductions from such passages as 
Luke iv. 39, or Mark iv. 39 ; though we can hardly 
fail gravely to meditate on the strange fact that in one 
case the seeming recognition of the disease as a hostile 
potency is certainly where we should have least ex- 
pected it — in the record of a physician, and that in the 
other the warring elements were checked by personi- 
fying words, which (with every deduction for Oriental 
forms of speech, or whatever else may be used to dilute 



522 ^II^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

plain terms) it does seem somewhat hazardous to ex- 
plain away as merely pictm-esqne or rhetorical. Agaiii, 
to take a last instance, we may feel that in the touch- 
ing words at the close of Matt. xxvi. 38 {ryp7]yop£lT6 [xer 
i[iov) some desire, on the part of the Saviour of the 
world, for the sympathy in the dread nour of His agony 
of those He loved, is actually though mysteriously dis- 
closed. "We may muse hereon in adoring wonder, and 
feel, perhaps still more freshly, the blessed comfort that 
flows from such words as Heb. iv. 15, but we forbear 
applying any such statements to the profound questions 
connected with the two !N'atures, and refuse to see in 
them anything more than silent but persuasive hints 
against the varied assumptions and speculations of 
Apollinarian error. 

To gather up all,^ — if in each of the three cases on 
which we have dwelt we would apply Scripture with 
profit, let us learn, firsts to use all types not Scripturally 
vouched for, as illustrations, and not as supplying argu- 
ments ; secondly, to recognize the existence of second 
meanings, but, except in such cases as inspiration may 
have revealed them, not to be wise above what is writ- 
ten; and, lastly, to let our deductions ever be of a 
devotional rather than of a definitely doctrinal or his- 
torical aspect, — to accept them as often tending much 
to inward comfort and edification, but as rarely adding 
much to our knowledge of the deeper mysteries of 
Scripture, and never to be so applied without our in- 
curring the heavy charge of great irreverence and pre- 
sumption. 



15. One portion of the subject now alone remains 
to be noticed. We have hitherto been concerned 
mainly with the general aspects and spirit of the 
Sacred Yolume ; but, as these must ever depend on 
just recognitions of the laws of the letter, we will make 
a few concluding comments on the language of Scrip- 
ture, and on those grammatical principles by which it 
seems to be ruled and conditioned. 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTURE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 523 

Our remarks, however, must be confined simply to 
tlie language of the New Testament. It is for others^ to 
speak of the language of the Old Testament, and to state 
how far our present knowledge of the letter of the origi- 
nal is capable of extension or improvement. Some of 
the remarks that have been already made, and perhaps 
some even of the comments that follow, may admit of 
partial applications to the Old Testament ; but it is clear 
that the circumstances under which the two parts of the 
Sacred Volume appear before us, as regards language, 
are very different, and that but little of what is said in 
reference to the details of the one can be pertinently 
applied to the details of the other. Independently of 
all the recognized philological differences, we have, in 
the case of the Old Testament, a collection of writings 
which themselves constitute all that deserves the name 
of the literature of the language ; while in the case of 
the New we have a small number of histories and let- 
ters which only form a very m-innte, and that too in 
some respects an exceptional, portion of the general 
literature of the language in which they are written. 
Still some broad principles may remain which may 
perhaps equally apply to the interpretation of the letter 
in both Testaments. It would certainly seem that, 
much as has of late been done for the study of the 
Hebrew language, especially in Germany, there is still 
room for a more scientific development of many of the 
laws by which that ancient language appears to be 
governed. There is even now, as a reference to any of 
the more recent commentaries on the books of the Old 
Testament will clearly show, less linguistic precision, 
less mastery of details, less recognition of those bye- 
laws which, in every language, but especially in the 
Semitic, so much regulate special interpretation, less, 
in a word, of scholarship, as distinguished from learn- 
ing, than we might have expected from the correspond- 
ing advances in the Greek language. Nay, even in 
wdiat falls more especially under the head of learning, 
study of the ancient Versions, much is still lacking. 
Our modern commentaries on books of the Old Testa- 



524 ^II>S TO FAITH. [Ess AT IX 

ment are herein scarcely, if at all, more advanced than 
the current commentaries on the 'New Testament, though 
in some cases, especiahy in that of the Sjriac, and per- 
haps also of parts of the Arabic Version,* more real 
benefit, from the affinities of language, is to be ex- 
pected from their use in the Old Testament than in 
the New. 

16. But, to pass to that with which we are more 
immediately concerned, — the language of the New 
Testament, — we may find it convenient first to make 
a few comments of a general nature relating to the lan- 
guage as viewed in connexion with earlier or contem- 
porary Greek, and then in the second j^lace to append 
a small list of selected comments on such details of 
syntax as may seem to require notice or illustration. 

With regard to the ge?ieral character of the Greek 
of the E'ew Testament, the estimate commonly formed 
by modern writers on this subject appears perfectly 
correct, viz., that it is neither in every respect classi- 
cally pure on the one hand, nor yet simply and essen- 
tially Hebraistic on the other, but that it has for its 
basis that "common" or "Hellenic dialect" wdiich the 
conquests of Alexander and those who succeeded him 
spread over a great part of the East, and wdiich, from 
involving a mixture of dialects, and especially of the 
Macedonian, has sometimes been designated simply by 
this last-mentioned name. It must not, however, be 
forgotten that this " common," " Hellenic," or " Mace- 
donian dialect," though undoubtedly the foundation of 
the Greek of the New Testament, received at least three 
very important modifications when it became blessed 
by being the vehicle of the message of salvation to the 
world at large. In the first place, the writers of the 
]^ew Testament, though undoubtedly possessing a very 
competent knowledge of the Greek language as used 
and spoken in their own times, must have often thought 
in their native Aramaic, and so unconsciously have im- 

* It is perhaps right to observe that nearly all the other Versions of the 
Old Testament, except of course the Vulgate, are known to be, or with rea- 
son supposed to be, derived from the Septuagint._ This, of course, greatly 
detracts from their value as exegetical aids in reading the original. 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPEETATIOK 525 

parted that Hebraistic tinge to their language which is 
undoubtedly to be traced in it. The observation is per- 
fectly correct that the pure Hebraisms of the 'New 
Testament are not very numerous, and that they are 
more of a lexical than a grammatical character,* still it 
cannot be denied that semi-Hebraisms, or traces of this 
occasionally thinking in their own language while they 
were writing in another, are neither so few nor so faint 
as sometimes has been asserted by writers on this sub- 
ject. No discriminating reader can fail to observe this, 
especially in the not uncommon tendency to co-ordina- 
tion, where subordination would have seemed more 
conformable to the spirit of the language in which they 
were writing ; in the striking predominance of the direct 
over the indirect or oblique form when the words or 
thoughts of another are referred to ; in the partially re- 
dundant uses of pronouns, and even prepositions, and 
the corresponding and equally characteristic want of 
freedom in the uses of the conjunction; in the compar- 
atively rare occurrence of the optative mood, and yet 
again in uses of the infinitive (especially in reference to 
purpose) even more varied than we find them in earlier 
ages of the language. All this cannot fail to strike the 
observant reader, and to remind him how much beyond 
the recurrence of simple and definite Hebraisms, like 
Trpoaco'TTov Xa/jU^dveLv, or ^rjTecv '^v')(7Jv, the semi-Hebra- 
isms or rather the Aramaic tinge of the I^ew Testament 
must really be considered to extend. f 

Another general diiference between the language of 
the New Testament and the language of the ordinary 
Greek writers of the same or even an earlier period, is 
clearly to be explained by the fact that so much of the 
ISTew Testament is marked, in respect of language, by 
what may be roughly termed oral characteristics. The 
Gospels had only assumed the form in which we find 

* See Winer, ' Grammatik des Neutest. Spracb.' § 3, p. 26 (ed. 6). 

t Winer very properly calls attention to the existence of two classes of 
Hebraisms in the New Testament : pure Hebraisms, and what he terms ".im- 
perfect" Hebraisms, or expressions, which, though not without some paral- 
lelism in earlier or later Greek, are probably to be referred simply to the 
influence of the mother tongue. See ' Grammatik,' § 3, p. 26 seg. 



526 ^^^ TO FAITH. [EssATlX. 

them, after some years, at least, of oral deliveiy. Prob- 
ably the greater part of the Epistles, and certainly by 
far the greater part of those Tvhich came from St. Pant, 
were written down from dictation. Even in the book 
(the Acts) which more nearly approaches formal history 
than any of the others, tlie speeches are not only numer- 
ous, but to all appearance faithful recitals of words 
actually spoken. The oral element thus pervades the 
whole Sacred Yolume, and, on the one hand, may 
justly be considered as contributing in a very great 
degree to that combined simplicity and force which is 
so observable in the narrative portions, and, on the 
other hand, is equally clearly to be seen and felt in the 
longer sentences, suspended structures, and relapses to 
a nominative which we so often meet with in the epis- 
tolary portion, esi^ecially in the writings of St. Paul. 
The whole subject is well worthy of attention. It has 
often been alluded to by writers on the language of the 
'New Testament, but has never yet received that con- 
sideration and recognition which it seems most fully to 
deserve. 

A third difference is to be observed in the use of 
words and terms, in what may be called a specially 
Christimi sense. Words sufficiently familiar to the 
general reader of Greek, e. g.^ irlari^, iriaTeveLv, crcorrjplay 
adp^, K. T. \., reappear in the Isew Testament in per- 
fectly new combinations, and are found to be invested 
with meanings completely distinctive and peculiar. 
Many of these may be traced to the Old Testament, 
while some others may have been applications in an- 
other language of expressions not unknown to the Pab- 
binical writings of the day; still, in a general and 
popular way of speaking, they may be considered to 
mark a specially Christian aspect of the language we 
are considering, and one which is not always sufficiently 
taken into account in comparisons of it with ordinary 
G-reek. Long familiarity with these terms renders us 
less sensitive to this difference than we are to some 
.others, but to an intelligent reader of Greek, in whose 
hands the 'Ne^Y Testament was placed for the first time, 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUKE, AND ITS INTEEPKETATIOK 52 7 

this perhaps would seem the most strikmg point in 
which its hmguage differed, not only from that of the 
classical authors, but even from that of the Hellenic 
writers who lived nearer to Christian times. 

These three elements — a Hebraistic tone of thought, 
not only showing itself in isolated terms but in the 
connexion and dependence of clauses, the oral element, 
giving its character to whole groups of sentences, and 
the Christian element to words and expressions, all 
combine to place before us a form of- the "common 
dialect " as unique as, even in a mere literary point of 
view, it is also interesting and instructive. But though 
so unique it is still neither to be exempted from the 
application of the ordinary laws of the Greek language, 
nor to be dealt with as if it had neither certainty nor 
accuracy. This last is one of the convenient assump- 
tions of the time. Even grammar is thus made to 
bend to prejudice. What seems tolerably certain and 
agreed upon is at once dispensed with whenever the 
" verifying faculty " is thought to demand it. The 
plausible rule of interpreting Scripture like any other 
book gives place at once to protests against the scho- 
lasticism of philology, warnings against the danger of 
making words mean too much, and liints that scholar- 
ship may not unlikely lead us to impress a false system 
on words and constructions. Into all the forms of this 
really deceitful dealing with written words we will not 
here enter. They can only be dealt satisfactorily with 
in detail, and disproved by a just consideration of indi- 
vidual passages. We may, however, dispose of the 
danger supposed to come from overmuch scholarship 
by these two brief remarks : — First, that no one is to 
be esteemed really a good scholar in reference to the 
'New Testament unless he is well acquainted with the 
minutiae of Hellenic as well as of Attic Greek, and 
knows well when to recognize later usage {e. g. firj with 
participles, tendency to double compounds, &c.), and 
when {e. g. in tenses, conditional sentences, &c,) to 
apply with some rigour the rules of classical Greek. 
Secondly, let this undoubted fact never be forgotten, — 



528 ^II>S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

that the " common dialect," which we so justly recog- 
nize as the basis of the language of the J^ew Testa- 
ment, was really itself placed on the corner-stone of 
Attic prose, and that a good knowledge of Attic G]*eek 
is simply indispensable. All sound scholars are now 
alike agreed in recognizing two contrary principles in 
Hellenic Greek : on the one hand a tendency to assim- 
ilate provincialisms ; on the other hand a tendency to 
recur to Attic usage, which passes at last often into a 
hypercritical affectation. Are we then to relax our 
study of a pure phase of language which thus implic- 
itly is to be seen and recognized in the writings of the 
New Testament, and which, by being itself so capable 
of precise definition, is ever such a useful standard 
with which to compare supposed deviations or corrup- 
tions ? This single remark may be appended by way 
of conclusion, — that if the Greek of the ISTew Testa- 
ment be carefully examined with reference to this 
standard (Attic Greek), it will be seen clearly enough, 
that the difference is very far from being so great as 
might have been ex23ected, and that it is really more 
to be felt in what is lacking and limited, in the less 
free use of the particles of connexion, and the less 
facile combination of clauses, than in what is definitely 
solecistic and erroneous. A few instances of this latter 
kind of usage may undoubtedly be found, as for in- 
stance ha with a present indicative (1 Cor. iv. 6, Gal. 
iv. 17^), but they are very rare, and, considering the 
various elements that enter into the language of the 
I^ew Testament, even strikingly exceptional. 

17. Let us close this j)ortion of the subject, and 
illustrate in some measure what has been already said, 
by a short list of such systematic details as may per- 
haps be useful in their collected form to the student of 
the Greek Testament, and may not be wholly out of 
place even in a general essay like the present. "We 
will endeavour to avoid all technicalities of language 

* The attempt of Fritzche and others to explain this by supposing 'Iva an 
adverb, does not seem at all natural or plausible. See Winer, ' Grammatik,' 
§ 41, p. 259. 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPRETA.TION. 529 

or arrangement ; but, for the sake of perspicuity, will 
adhere to the ordinary heads under which such obser- 
vations are usually distributed. 

(1.) The artide claims the first place, and may be 
said still to require more careful study than it has ever 
yet received, especially in regard to its usage in those 
jDortions of the ]N"ew Testament which are supposed to be 
of latest date. We are told, indeed, that such discus- 
sions have " already gone far beyond the line of utility," 
but we shall scarcely be moved by such comments, 
when a reference to the pages almost of any expositor 
shows how much uncertainty still prevails on this sub- 
ject, and how common an error it is to press the force 
of the article when it is only present in consequence of 
the action of some general rule. Thus, for example, 
what the grammarians call the law of " correlation," or, 
to speak more simply, the general rule that if two sub- 
stantives are in regimen, either both will have the ar- 
ticle, or both be without it, is constantly and sometimes 
even absurdly violated. "Words are often passed as 
peculiarly definite, which only assume the form of 
definiteness in consequence of the action of the general 
rule ; and, again, deductions are made from their sup- 
posed indefiniteness when the presence of the defining 
article would be a simple solecism. The omission of 
the article, however, in the later Epistles is perhaps 
the point which at present most requires consideration ; 
nay, even in the case of a writer where we should not 
have expected it, the Evangelist St. Luke, the oldest 
manuscripts, especially as supported by the new Codex 
Sinaiticus, disclose a far greater amount of j^robable 
omissions than we should at all have been likely, a 
priori^ to expect. Careful consideration of these will 
probably lead to some modification of the existing rules 
connected with the use of the article in the ISTew Testa- 
ment. Meanwhile to group hastily together what we 
know, it may be remarked : — {a) That the words which 
assume the privilege of proper names and dispense 
with the article where it might have been expected, 
are very numerous in the New Testament. Very im- 
23 



530 -^I^S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

portant examples of this may often be found in the uses 
of the words Hvevjia and vofio^;^ and doctrinal state- 
ments or deductions much modified by a recognition of 
what is now, in the case of both these words, a matter 
of simple demonstration, (b) That the article is often 
omitted after a preposition, but a23]3arentlj subject to 
tliis sort of rough limitation, viz., that when it is the 
apparent desire of the writer to be peculiarly distinct 
and definite he rarely fails to insert it. Of this, 1 Tim. 
ii. 15 may perhaps be referred to as a pertinent exam- 
ple. The rule seems to be in such cases, — " Press the 
article when present, but do not press the absence of it 
when it happens to be absent." {c) Tlie ]3opularly 
known omission of the article after the verb substantive 
and verbs implying names or designations, is not always 
snfiiciently remembered by the interpreter of the New 
Testament, {d) The amount and extent of the omissions 
of the article where the substantive practically coa- 
lesces with the clause which follows {e. g. Col. i. 8, rr^v 
v/jLcov a^dirrjv iv Uvevfiari^ or Eph. i. 15, ttjv KaQ^ vfjLd<; 
TTicTTLv iv T(p Kvpicp ^Itjctov) liave not yet, perhaps, been 
fully recognized or agreed upon. Perhaps some rule 
similar to that alluded to in {h) may not be found in 
the sequel to be much exaggerated, (e) Lastly, several 
examples of what is called Granville Sharp's rule, or 
the inference from the presence of the article only be- 
fore the first of two substantives connected with koll 
that they both refer to the same person or class, must 
be deemed very doubtful. The rule is sound in prin- 
ciple, but, in the case of proper names or quasi- proper 
names, cannot safely be pressed. 

(2.) With regard to substantives^ the points that seem 
most to need attention are the different connections and 
constructions of the genitive and, in a less degree, of 
the dative cases. The use of the former, especially 
when.under the regimen of a preceding substantive, is 
peculiarly varied, and will require considerable tact on 
the part of the accm'ate interpreter. "Without descend- 
ing to very minute details, or attempting to discuss all 
the nine or ten divisions into which the various forms 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTUKE, AND ITS INTERPEETATION. 53 j 

of the genitive may be separated, we may direct atten- 
tion to the following selected exemplifications of the 
uses of this case as found in the 'New Testament : — (a) 
The use of the genitive as specifying something in appo- 
sition to, or identical with, the noun, by which it is gov- 
erned, e. g., 2 Cor. v. 5, tov appa^oiva tou IIvev/jLaTo^, 
Eph. vi. li, TOV OcopaKa Trj<; hiKaioavvrjq ; (h) a widely ex- 
tended use to denote the ideas of origination (Rom. iv. 
13, BcfcacoavvT] Tr/o-Teo)?), and not unfrequently of definite 
agency (2 Thess. ii. 13, dycacrfio<; UvevfJiaTo^) ; {c) a still 
more extended use in which very varied relations, both 
of time (Jude 6, icpicn^ fjL€'yaXr)<^ rjfiepa^) and of place, 
whether topographical (Matt. i. 11, fjueroLKeo- la BajSvXco- 
vo^y ib. ch. X. 5, 6^o<^ iOvcov) or general (Col. i. 20, al/jia 
TOV (TTavpov), are all simply and briefly expressed by 
this flexible case. If we add to these {d) a smaller 
class, in which ideas, so to speak, of ethical substance 
or contents appear to predominate (see Eph. i. 13, tov 
'koyov Tr}<; ak7)6eia^ to eva^yyeXcov t^9 acoTrjpLa^ u/jlcov, 
where both ideas appear in adjacent clauses) ; and lastly 
(e), the not uncommon use of the genitive to denote the 
prevailing character or quality (Luke xvi. 8, oi/cov6/io<^ 
Tr]<; dScKLa<;), — a use which probably owes its frequency 
to the part which, in Aramaic, the dependent noun 
plays as a representative of the adjective, — we shall 
perhaps have enumerated all the more noticeable forms 
in which the dependent genitive appears in the New 
Testament. Attention to this case, especially in deeper 
and doctrinal passages, will often be found to yield 
very important practical results, and to suggest topics 
for application which popular writers, who commonly 
treat all this as mere scholastic pedantry, are com- 
pletely unaware of. 

The use of the dative is much varied, and may be 
disposed of in two or three sentences. If the essential 
idea of the case as that of limitation and circumscrip- 
tion (the whereat case, just as the genitive is the where- 
from case, and the accusative the whereto case) be 
properly borne in mind, it is not probable that even in 
the less direct uses, — e, g.^ in reference io ethical locality 



532 ^I^S TO FAITH. [EssATlX 

(1 Cor. xiv. 20), rule and measure (Acts xv. 1), .&c., 
any real difficult}^ will be felt. The only usage wliicli 
seems to require any notice is one of occasional occur- 
rence, where ideas of instrumentality or manner seem to 
merge into those of the imaginary place loliere^ or the 
general circumstances owing to whicfi^ the action is sup- 
posed to have taken place. Thus St. Paul writes, in Gal. i. 
22, that he was a^jVQovyb&vo^ t&) nrpocraiTTw to the Churches 
of Judea ; — his countenance was not the instrument, but 
rather the imaginary scene of the display of the a<yvoLa. 
Again, he tells his converts at Rome that the Jews 
(under the image of the natural branches) rfj aTrccrrla 
i^eK\d(T07]aav (Eom. xi. 20 ; comp. ver. 30, 1 Cor. viii. 
Y) by which he would seem to refer, not to the actual 
instrument hj/ which^ but to the state of heart and feel- 
ing owing to lohich the judicial act was performed. 

(3.) AVe may pass onward to "verls. Here, again, 
we can only make a few general comments, as anything 
like even a mere rudimentary outline of the more strik- 
ing usages would far exceed our present limits. We 
may remark, however, J?;'5Z^, that the usual rules of cor- 
rect Greek are observed very persistently, in the moods, 
tenses, connection of dependent clauses, and even in 
the refinements of the conditional sentence. In this 
latter case, however, one important element will com- 
monly be found lacking, — the optative mood. It occurs 
very rarely in such sentences (comp., however, 1 Pet. iii. 
14, 17, Acts xxiv. 19), and, indeed, but seldom in the 
[N'ew Testament generally; its rarity of occurrence serv- 
ing to remind the reader that he is now within the 
precints of what Lobeck somewhat c^uaintly terms 
" fatiscens Grsecitas." A second general remark may be 
made on another sign of grammatical degeneracy, the 
use of the verb-substantive with participles, to mark 
with some distinctness, ideas of continuance or contem- 
poraneity. This we find in nearly all the writings of 
the ]S"ew Testament, and, perhaps, more frequently 
than elsewhere, in the writings of an author who we 
might have thought would have been least likely to 
have adopted it, the well-educated and practised St. 



Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 533 

Luke. • The cases, however, in which it occurs do not 
appear at all of a confused or promiscuous nature ; but, 
as we have above suggested, whenever the Sacred 
Writer desired to be particularly definite in reference 
to time and its duration. A third general remark in 
reference to verbs (capable also of being extended to 
other parts of speech) is this, — that compound forms 
cannot always be safely pressed. There appears to 
have been a very marked tendency in later Greek to 
an increase in composition without in every case a cor- 
responding increase of meaning, and from this the New 
Testament is not exempt. Caution, however, must be 
shown in applying this remark, as our knowledge of 
the exact meaning of compound verbs in the ]^ew 
Testament is still very limited. It is, indeed, much to 
be regretted that the German grammarian Winer 
never completed his treatise on this subject. The four 
or five parts of it that have been published are excel- 
lent specimens of a careful and scholarly analysis of a 
subject that requires much reading, and not a little 
tact and penetration. 

If we allow ourselves to devote a few sentences to 
matters of detail, we may profitably direct attention to 
four points : — (a) an occasional use of the middle voice 
in the JN'ew Testament (Col. i. 6, KapTrocpopovfievoVy and 
1 Tim. i. 16, evhei^rjrai^ may perhaps be cited as exam- 
ples) in which all tinge of a reflexive sense appears lost, 
and in which we seem to recognize the presence of that 
sort of "intensive" force which the best and latest 
grammarians* have assigned to this yet imperfectly- 
understood voice ; (5) the use of the present tense, not, 
as we are too often told, " for the future," but with its 
usual proper force to mark what is abiding, fixed, and 
predetermined, especially in reference to the course of 
things as appointed by God (Col. iii. 6 ; Matt. xvii. 11 ; 
xxvi. 2, al.) ; {c) the somewhat expansive use of the 
future in the New Testament, and its partial assimila- 
tion of various shades of meaning of an imperative 

* See Donaldson, ' Greek Grammar,' § 432. 2. hb ; Kriiger, * Sprachlehre,' 
§ 52. 8. 



534 •^II>S TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 

character, especially when in connexion with a nega- 
tive (comp. Matt. vi. 5; Acts xiii. 10; Matt. v.. 21; 
Eom. vii. T ; xiii. 9) ; lastly, {d) the uses of present and 
aoristic participles with a finite verb (especially in St. 
Luke and St. Paul) to mark the ideas of time, cause, 
manner, and concession (comp. Luke iv. 35 ; ix. 16 ; 
Col. 1. 3 seq.y al.). These uses, though not exhibiting 
quite the same amount of flexibility as in earlier Greek, 
are still sufficiently varied to call for a far greater 
amount of attention from the interpreter than they have 
yet received. 

(4.) We have now remaining only two groups of 
words on which observation seems necessary, \hQ parti- 
cles and the prepositions. In regard to their uses we 
may notice a very clear and instructive difference, 
serving to remind us how sensibly the influence of the 
Aramaic element makes itself felt, both positively and 
negatively, in some parts of the syntax of the ^N^ew 
Testament. In the prejpositions, for instance, we ob- 
serve a redundancy as well as variety of use, which, if 
we did not call to mind the characteristics of the mother- 
tongue of the writers,' might seem particularly strange 
and perplexing. This desire to imitate the expressive- 
ness (in this respect) of the Aramaic, combined, prob- 
ably, with a certain loss of sensitiveness to the full 
force of cases, may account for the appearance of the 
prepositions airo and eic with verbs of "giving" (Luke 
xxiv. 42), "receiving" (Mark xii. 2), and even of 
" eating and drinking" (Matt. xv. 27 ; John iv. 14), 
where, to say the very least, they would be excessively 
unusual in classical Greek. The same may be said of 
the union of et? and 7r/)09 with a large class of verbs 
where a dative would have seemed much more conso- 
nant with the genius of the language. The variety 
again of the usage of individual prepositions is peculiar- 
ly striking, and still more so the studied accumulations 
of them in a single sentence, especially in St. Paul's 
Epistles (Eom. xi. 36 ; Col. i. 16, al.). These latter, 
though sometimes jDcrhaps called forth and suggested 
by doctrinal distinctions (Eph. iv. 6), seem especially 



J 



Essay IX.] SCKIPTUEE, AND ITS INTEEPEETATION. 535 

to indicate an ease and freedom that would have been 
looked for in vain in the ordinary Greek of the time. 
Equally well marked is the general correctness with 
which these varied usages are distinguished. If we 
except the tendency to over-use, which we have already 
observed, and a few combinations (e. g. of et? with some 
verbs of rest, iv with some verbs of motion, and the 
extended use of the latter preposition to forms and ex- 
pressions where viro or hia might have seemed more 
usual) which, though not without parallelism in earlier 
Greek, do certainly seem to reflect some tinges of incip- 
ient degeneracy,* or some reminiscences of the mother- 
tongue, there is really not only no prevailing incorrect- 
ness wliatever in the use of the preposition in the New 
Testament, but very frequentl}^ a sharpness and pre- 
cision (comp. Rom. xiii. 1) that reminds the student of 
the best days of the language. When, then, a recent 
writer on the interpretation of Scripture urges that in 
Gal. iv. 13, hici with the accusative is to be conceived 
as used for or equivalent in meaning to hia with the 
genitive, he not only shows himself a lax interpreter of 
the passage in question, but also shows a deficient 
knowledge of a general fact, — the accuracy of prepo- 
sitional usage in the ITew Testament, which ought to 
have made such an assumption seem a priori in a very 
high degree improbable. 

(5.) In strong contrast to this usage of prepositions 
stands that of the QvQok particles. With the exception 
of Kaly ovPy Si, rydp, and perhaps also cw? and dWd, in 
the uses of which there is not only variety but some- 
times wxll marked idiomatic force and character, there 
are not many other particles in the New Testament 
which are used with complete ease and freedom. There 
is a certain degree of monotony, a deficient amount of 
combination, and a want of flexibility in the use of the 
particles of the New Testament which stand in marked 

* No trace whateyer of that utter insensibility to the fundamental meaning 
of cases which led the Byzantine writers to confound, for example, /iera with a 
gen. and /xera with an accus., or to ioin airh with an accus. or dat., crvu with 
a gen., or Kara ^v'ith a dutive, is to be found anywhere iu the New Testament. 



536 -^^^S '^^ FAITH. [EssATlX 

antithesis to the ease and even redundancy which are 
to be observed in the use of the prepositions. Yet, as 
it was in the case of the latter, so is it with the particles ; 
there is a prevailing accuracy in their usage, and a very 
general conformity to the laws of the language in its 
earlier and better state. There are some exceptional as- 
pects, as for instance, the use of jjlt] with participles 
when there is no tinge of a subjective negation intended 
(the rule indeed is, " Press ov when connected with a par- 
ticiple, but not 1X1] "), the weakened force of tW, and its 
occasional use to designate something lying, as it were, 
midway between purpose and result, the use of on to 
introduce another's words in their direct form, combi- 
nations like KaOoi^ and juxta-positions like ap ovv, — 
such there are, but all such childish statements as the 
use of one particle for another, and so forth, are to be 
dismissed, as they have long been dismissed by all 
better scholars, as very unprofitable delusions. It is, 
however, painful to observe how, in some quarters, such 
prejudices still hold their ground, and how even those 
who affect to lay down well-considered rules on Scripture 
interpretation, tell us that "it is an error to interpret 
every particle in the IsTew Testament as if it were a 
link in the argument when it is often a mere excrescence 
of style." Such comments on supposed error are really 
themselves very erroneous ; and the pages of any one 
of the better expositors of the day, who has attended to 
the sequence of thought in his author, would not only 
show them to be so, but would also make us feel very 
sensibly how completely subversive they are of all 
principles of faithful and consistent interpretation. The 
German commentaries of De Wette and Meyer are 
very good standing protests against such hasty and ill- 
considered comments. These writers, though in no way 
pledged to orthodoxy in matters of doctrine, have had 
far too great experience in the language of the E'ew 
Testament to be heterodox in point of grammar. They 
never hesitate to bestow the greatest possible attention 
on all minutiae, and exhibit in a very satisfactory way 
what striking results are to be obtained from a careful 



Essay IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AKD ITS INTEEPEETATION. 537 

estimate of connecting particles, and how very near an 
approach can be made to the mind of the inspired writer 
by this mode of patient and philosophical investigation. 

18. This last portion of our subject must now be 
brought to its close. We have left very many points 
untouched, on wdiich comment might seem in some 
measure desirable, but our article has already exceeded 
its prescribed limits, and it now becomes necessary to 
transgress no further on the patience of our readers. 
Yet it seems impossible to part from those who have 
traversed with us the wide domain which belongs to 
such subjects as those we have considered, without a 
few words of valediction, and a few expressions of min- 
gled anxiety and hope. 

Those against whom our observations have been di- 
rected will probably not be affected by anything that 
we have urged. The tone of self-confidence which 
marks their writings; the unfairness, or, to use the mild- 
est term, the slipperiness that pervades their arguments; 
the really cruel and thoughtless way in which they 
have allowed themselves to scatter doubt and uneasi- 
ness ; their utter carelessness for the feeble, and the 
unstable, and the many who, with all their frailties 
and shortcomings, still deserve the name of " babes in 
Christ," — all these many painful characteristics make 
us feel that as far as they are concerned we have writ- 
ten and have spoken in vain. There are others, how- 
ever, with whom it may not be so. There are kindly 
eyes that may have fallen on these pages, which, though 
not seeing wholly as we see, may yet have been en- 
couraged to gaze longer and more earnestly, and to 
wait gently and patiently for a glimpse of the fair land- 
scape that lies beyond what now may seem to them 
only a cloud-land of eddying vapour and wandering 
storm. God in His everlasting mercy, for our dear 
Lord's sake, grant that it may be so ! God grant that 
such may see and feel that these are no cunningly de- 
vised fables, no mere arguments put forward for love 
of controversy, no mere assumption of orthodox atti- 
tudes for the sake of self-interest (untrue and ignoble 
23* 



538 ^^^^ 'TO FAITH. [Essay IX, 

taunt of embittered opponents !), bnt a statement of 
earnest and serious convictions, which deepen with 
deepening reflection, to which every fleeting day bears 
its tribute of increasing assurance^ which every prayer 
quickens, every blessing stimulates, every trial confirms. 
May they be moved to j udge us thus kindly and fairly ; 
and may our poor words be permitted in return to im- 
part some comfort in anxieties, and to answer some of 
those doubts with which honest and good hearts are often 
permitted to be tried. 

Lastly, may the great Father of love and mercy 
draw all who love His ever blessed Son, and who see 
in Him the propitiation for the sins of a whole guilty 
world, still nearer together. It may be, when all was 
well, we dealt hardly with each other, that we thought 
unkindly and spoke with bitterness. It may be even that 
we have acted in the same spirit, that we have helped 
to break up the household of faith into hostile camps, 
that we have smitten friends and brethren, and led those 
who would not use our shibboleths to the vale of slaugh- 
ter and spared them not. But now the foe is on the 
frontier. If love is still cold, yet at least let danger 
reunite. Let us yield to instincts, if we care not yet 
for principles. Let us do only this, and it may be that 
even thus we may be allowed to see and feel that all 
was so ordered by a loving Father, — that danger was 
to bring about reunion, and reunion to rekindle love. 
And then at last, with linked hands and united hearts, 
may we again join in praising and blessing our common 
Lord, evermore adoring Him who round our weakness 
and divisions winds the encircling bond of His strength 
and love, "round our incompleteness His complete- 
ness, round our restlessness His rest." 



THE END. 



D. Appleton & Company's Publications. 

REVOLUTIONS 

IN 

ENGLISH HISTORY. 

BY 

ROBERT VAUGHAN, D.D. 
VOL. I. 

REVOLUTIONS OF RACE. 



In tbis work, Dr. Yauguax, the Editor of the British Quarterly Review, intendi 
t* ^oup together the leading facts of English History, so as to reveal at a glance the 
pHygt*<« of the nation. It is a step towards the sinaplification of English History, 
By th* term Revolutions, the author intends to denote the great phases of change, 
through which both the government and people of England have passed, during the 
historical period of their existence, 

"A work of this kind," says BlacJcwood's 3fagazine, "cannot be superfluous, if it 
is worthily executed ; and the honorable position which Dr. Vaughan has earned 
for himself in both theology and literature, gives us a guarantee that this will be the 
case. The specimen before us we have read with interest and improvement. We 
should particularize the ecclesiastical portion of the history as being executed Avith 
special care, and as remarkable for the spirit of justice and liberality he displays. To 
these pages we may honestly recommend the reader, as the fruit of steady and con- 
Bcientious labor, directed by a liberal and enlightened spirit" 

"This treatise," says the London AthencBum, "or rather narrative, is deeply and 
variously interesting. "Written plainly, but with all the characteristics of independent 
thought and accomplished scholarship, it may be pronounced a masterly survey of 
English civilization from the remotest epoch to the commencement of the fifteenth 
century. "Wo have found this volume in every way excellent. It is at once a narra- 
tive and a disquisition, learned, genial, critical, and also picturesque. The spirit ol 
English history animates it throughout. Dr. Vaughan, by completing such a work 
will have done good service to literature." 

The Westminster Revieic, the very highest critical authority upon English liter- 
ature, said of this work, upon its original publication in England—" We can sincerely 
recommend Dr. Yaughan's Eevolutions in English History as a thoughtful, interest- 
ing, scholarly presentment of the principal sociological vicissitudes of more than two 
thousand years of our British existence. Dr. Yaughan''s composition is extremely 
lucid and nervous ; not without a certain sedate ornamentation, but quite free from 
Um misleading exaggerations of a seductive rhetoric. 



J). Applefon & Company^s Publications, 



18 CHRISTIAN CENTURIES. 

BY 

THE EEV. JAMES WHITE, 

AUTHOR OF A HISTORY OF FRANCE. 

I Vol. 12mo. Cloth. 538 pages. $1 25. 



CONTENTS. 
1. Cent. — The Bad Emperors.— II, The Good Emperors.— III. Anar- 
chy and Confusion. — Growth of tlie Christian Church. — IV. The Eemoval 
to Constantinople. — Establishment of Christianity. — Apostasy of Julian.— 
Settlement of the Goths. — V. End of the Eoman Empire. — Formation of 
Modern States. — Growth of Ecclesiastical Authority. — VI. Belisarius and 
Narses in Italy— Settlement of the Lombards. — Laws of Justinian. — Birth 
of Mohammed. — VII. Power of Kome supported by the Monks. — Con- 
quests of the Mohammedans. — VIII. Temporal Power of the Popes. — The 
Empire of Charlemao^ne. — IX. — Dismemberment of Charlemagne's Em- 
pire. — Danish Invasion of England. — Weakness of France. — Reign of 
Alfred. — X. Darkness and Despair.— XI. The Commencement of Improve- 
ment. — Gregory the Seventh. — First Crusade. — XII. Elevation of Learn- 
ing. — Power of the Church. — Thomas a Becket. — XIII. First Crusade 
against Heretics. — The Albigenses. — Magna Charta. — Edward I. — XIV. 
Abolition of the Order of Templars. — Pise of Modern Literature. — Schism 
of the Church. — XV. Decline of Feudalism. — Agincourt. — Joan of Arc. — 
The Printiug Press. — Discovery of America. — XVI. The Eeformation. — 
The Jesuits. — Policy of Elizabeth. — XVII. English Eebellion and Eevolu- 
tion. — Despotism of Louis the Fourteenth. — XVIII. India. — America. — 
France. — Index. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

Mr. "White possesses in a high degree the power of epitomizing — that 
faculty which enables him to distil the essence from a mass of fiicts, and to 
condense it in description ; a battle, siege, or other remarkable event, 
which, without his skill, might occupy a chapter, is compressed within 
the compass of a page or two, and this without the sacriflce of any feature 
essential or significant. — Century. 

Mr. White has been very happy in touching npon the salient points in 
the history of each century in the Christian era, and yet has avoided mak- 
ing his work a mere bald analj'sis or chronological table. — Prov. Journal. 

In no single volume of English literature can so satisfying and clear an 
idea of the historical character of these eighteen centuries be obtained. — 
HoaiE Journal. 

In this volume we have the best epitome of Christian History ex- 
tant. This is high praise, but at the same time just. The author's pecu- 
liar success is in making the great points and facts of history stand out in 
iharp relief. His style may be said to be stereoscopic, and the effect ia ex- 
ceedingly impressive. — Providexoe PREsa. 



^t/G 18 ]^a 



i 



